


Somewhere in Kandahar

by ThisShitMakesMeHard (Face_of_Poe)



Category: Justified
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Don't Ask Don't Tell, M/M, MST (military sexual trauma), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 04, Sexual Violence, Therapy, Triggers, post-season4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4950289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/ThisShitMakesMeHard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I got a young kid here, decorated sniper in Iraq war. Army Ranger. I don’t know how many kills he had. Always looking to kill somebody else. Probably got PTSD. Probably an alcoholic. Not a matter of if that powder keg is gonna blow but when."</p>
<p>That powder keg blew when Colton Rhodes killed Mark; Tim just did a good job of hiding it for a while. Until one night, a cowboy walked into a bar, and found a fugitive sitting next to the Lexington office's favorite sniper.<br/>Tim's not okay, and Raylan is apparently incapable of leaving it alone.</p>
<p>Set between seasons 4 and 5, largely based in events of season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well... this one got away from me. Dark and trigger-y, so certainly don't read if that's of potential concern. No direct depiction of traumatic events, but it is the primary focus of the story, so.
> 
> Somehow, this started off as a planned trope-y past Raylan/Boyd story and somehow turned into a trope-y, angsty Tim story with elements of past Raylan/Boyd that ended up coming off a bit shoehorned in for plot and comedic relief purposes. Sorry about that.  
> Aside from the (glaringly) obvious, I tried to fit it around the show with the possible exception of where Raylan lives. I think he ended up back in the motel by season 6 but I moved him back too early. Ah well.
> 
> A note about reading: the first three parts have a back and forth in the timeline. Parts 4-6 are linear. Whenever it says "X weeks prior," that's X weeks before the opening of the story, not necessarily the passage preceding. Seemed the easiest way of keeping the timeline straight if I was going to be a jerk and structure it like that.
> 
> And now that I've told you everything that's wrong with my story, do please read and enjoy. Heh.
> 
> Lastly - strong influences for this came from two stories I recently read: An Insane World (by crowberry and drop_an_idea_on_a_page) and Buck and Wildebeest (by leslielol). If you're in to angsty Tim, I highly recommend both.

**Part 1**

_Present_

 

“How long a session did my office spring for?”

 

“I work in hour blocks for all of my patients – and they’re springing for as many as you need.”

 

“And how long do I have left on this one?”

 

A cool stare shot over a travel mug held his gaze for ten seconds, and then sharp green eyes shifted down to a desktop alarm clock. “Fifty-four minutes and thirty-eight, seven, six seconds.” He grinned; at least she was precise. Regina Verenes, PhD (“a doctor but not Doctor; call me Reggie”), all manicured hands and pink lipstick and stacks of post-it notes just so, looked rather less amused, and she put down the mug and a pen she’d been idly tapping at the corner of the desk. “I’m going to be straight with you, Tim.”

 

“O-kay.”

 

“I’ve never counted, but I’d say easily two-thirds of my new patients do,” she waved her hand vaguely, “this. And I get it. You don’t want to be here. None of you want to be here, because I’m a trauma counselor, and if you’re one of my patients, it means something in your life has already gone to shit.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off before he could say anything. “Now, cases like yours, reluctance is compounded by resentment at being _told_ to come, and your livelihood depends on it. You’re not really here voluntarily, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Your options are coming to see me twice a week until I tell your boss you don’t have to anymore, looking for a position change within the Marshals Office that keeps you out of high stress environments, and one where you don’t handle firearms anymore… or quitting.”

 

“I know that,” Tim grumbled.

 

A wry smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. “Do you? Well, then this is the time to choose. I’ve had entire first sessions with patients that consist of commentary on the weather, my office fixtures, sports… hell, I’ve had entire hours of silence. And you know what? I get paid either way. But this is _your_ life, and I think you’re too straightforward to bullshit around with me, aren’t you, Tim?”

 

The office was quiet for a minute, save the rhythmic tapping of a light rainfall on the windows, the steady hum of a computer in the corner… the pounding of Tim’s blood in his ears. He shifted his gaze from the window to the computer, looked down at his hands before running them through his hair and sitting back and tiredly meeting Reggie’s calm, steady gaze. “That little speech work for you often?”

 

She cracked a light smile at that, softening a face aged slightly beyond her actual forty-odd years, if his pre-appointment Google-stalking was to be believed. “Eh, fifty-fifty.”

 

“What happens with the more belligerent half?”

 

“They usually spend the rest of the hour trying to push my buttons.”

 

Tim snorted. “Well, I’m not an asshole, so.” She tilted her head expectantly, short dark hair, tinged with the occasional grey, bobbing hypnotically around her face, and a sudden, unwelcome bout of uncertainty flooded him. “I just… this is new to me. I don’t know you. I mean, I know _you_ know why I’m here, but I’m not…”

 

“We don’t have to start right in on the specific circumstances precipitating you being here,” she broke into his rambling gently. “Talk about what _you_ want to talk about.”

 

His lips quirked. “Provided it isn’t the weather, sports, or your office?”

 

“Provided it is somehow about _you_ ,” she qualified, and then paused. “Preferably at least tangentially related to why you’re here.” Still, he hesitated. “What was on your mind when you were driving over?”

 

He always was a sucker for a direct question; years of answering to blowhard NCOs and self-important lieutenants fresh out of school who knew plenty about theory but nothing about the reality of the Army. He just wished he’d taken a moment to consider his answer, though he supposed that would have rather defeated the point of this little exercise. “Raylan fucking Givens.”

 

“Who’s Raylan ‘fucking’ Givens?”

 

It occurred at that moment that maybe he could find it in himself to like Regina Verenes after all. Respect her, at the very least. Her over-coiffed appearance and the small office in subdued (calming?) hues with that goddamned couch on the far wall only served to reinforce the reality that it had finally come down to this, seeing a damned _professional_ , but she humored him without being patronizing about it. “A pain in my ass. Coworker. He’s a good guy, but his personal bullshit is always getting dragged through the office and he’s got so much emotional baggage from his own shitty childhood that he projects it on everyone around him.”

 

“Then your childhood was shitty, too?”

 

Tim stared, then barked a laugh. “That tangential enough for you?” A ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

 

“Tell me more about Raylan, then.” He pursed his lips, and she gave him a pointed look, a light jab his direction from the pen held lazily in one hand. “You brought him up. Why was your coworker on your mind?”

 

“Because he’s a nosy bastard who’ll have figured by now where I am, and I could just _see him_ sitting there fretting and doing that earnest guilty thing that Raylan does, like he wants to fix you and doesn’t know how, and isn’t sure he wants to put the time and energy into it anyway.”

 

“Why does Raylan think that’s his responsibility?”

 

Tim huffed. “Because he tends to think the world revolves around him; I guess in fairness, it usually does in that office, it was a fairly quiet place before he got transferred in.”

 

Reggie tried again. “But why does he think _you_ are his responsibility?”

 

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Because six weeks ago, a cowboy walked into a bar.”

 

X---X

 

_Six Weeks Prior_

“Jesus _Christ_ , Gutterson.” Raylan leaned his head against the locker he’d just closed, to find Tim three paces away watching him with his arms crossed over his chest. “Make some noise, put a bell around your neck, something.”

 

“Would’ve made Iraq a helluva lot more interesting.”

 

Raylan straightened and shrugged on his shirt, the vest put away until his next run-in with Kentucky’s finest criminal elements. Tim just continued to stare, his face set in his deadest deadpan and giving away nothing. “When’d you get here?”

 

“Oh,” Tim drawled, bored, “not long after you. Rachel called to tell me I missed quite an evening; came in and caught most of the interrogation.” Raylan shot him a sidelong glance over his arm as he donned his hat, but still, the younger deputy betrayed nothing in his tone or his face.

 

Gun, badge, wallet, keys. Hat. All present and accounted for. “You want to go grab a bite?” Raylan asked at last. “Or a drink?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

X---X

 

They found themselves at a bar and grill that was more bar than grill, but still managed to drum up a decent plate of chili fries ten minutes after the kitchen proclaimed to close. Raylan watched the younger marshal’s face as he stared down a fry like it had caused some dire offense, before chewing it methodically and washing it down with a swig of beer.

 

Less discriminate in his own eating habits, Raylan popped a few fries into his mouth. “Can I just ask something?” he finally said as he chewed. Tim shot him a look drier than the Sahara.

 

“Yes, I’m gay,” the sniper deadpanned.

 

“Funnily enough,” Raylan’s lips quirked, despite his colleague’s obvious lack of amusement, “I’d already worked that part out. No, I’m just wondering – and, if it’s just a privacy thing or whatever, that’s fine -”

 

“Glad I have your approval.”

Raylan ignored him. “But you haven’t kept quiet about it at work because you think it’ll be a _problem_ , right?” The surprise in Tim’s eyes came and went almost too fast to catch. He covered it with another fry and a long pull from his bottle. “Because, you know. This ain’t the Army.”

 

“No, but it is Kentucky.”

 

A light frown pulled the corners of Raylan’s lips down. “So is the bar where I found you chattin’ up a fugitive not three hours ago.”

 

That twisted sort of smile crept onto Tim’s face but it was cold, challenging. “People there tend not to care about your resume when they invite you into the back alley for five minutes.” Raylan shrugged amiably in acknowledgement. “Which does rather beg the question of _your_ familiarity with the establishment.”

 

“Slept with the owner.”

 

Tim barked a humorless laugh. “Yeah, he seems your type.”

 

“Well, he’s not blond,” Raylan conceded. “So you’re really not going to answer me?” he persisted. “You think people at the office would care that you like men?”

 

“I think _you_ provide enough drama around the place with your sexual exploits and no one needs care about mine.” His pointed glare added _yourself, included_ where his words stopped.

 

Raylan leveled a neutral stare at him. “Judging by the spite in your tone, one might assume you’re angry with me. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just smarting and embarrassed from the _way_ I found out, rather than the completely coincidental fact that I did at all.”

 

“I just want to know what you plan on doing about it is all.”

 

His stare darkened. “Doing about it,” he echoed. “What the hell, Tim? I covered for you. Twice, as you know since you saw Sawyer’s interrogation.” Tim looked away blankly, emotions carefully stricken from his face save the moodiness that had pervaded his whole posture since he’d turned up in the locker room. “What kind of asshole do you think I am?”

 

“I mean…”

 

“Shut up. Don’t answer that.” The more pissed Raylan got, the more relaxed it seemed Tim became, and he wondered if that was because the younger marshal thrived on conflict or was simply reassured of Raylan’s discretion. “I’m from backwoods Kentucky; therefore, I am homophobe. Got it. Je pense, donc je suis.”

 

“Quod erat demonstrandum.”

 

“Whatever. You can fuck right off with that shit,” Raylan fumed. “Christ, Tim, have I _ever_ done something, or said something, that would make you -”

 

“I’m sorry, Raylan, Jesus. Calm down. It’s… goddamn, it’s just instinctive.”

 

But something softened in Raylan’s face, and he murmured, “Judge others before they get the chance to judge you. Self-preservation.”

 

“…yeah. Somethin’ like that.”

 

They sat in silence for a few minutes after that. Raylan dove back into the plate of fries like nothing happened, while Tim mostly took moody swigs of his bottle, polishing it off neatly and flagging down the waitress for another.

 

Just as he thought they were done talking, would simply finish their drinks and go their separate ways, Raylan was surprised when Tim spoke up quietly again, staring off into the corner and absently watching a couple of college kids shoot darts. “I appreciate you covering for me, but I’m going to tell Art I was there.” He shrugged at Raylan’s blank look. “It’d take ‘em five minutes, if they cared to look into what you and Sawyer talked about, I used my credit card. It’s too stupid of a lie to blow back on you, get you in trouble, just to spare my embarrassment.”

 

Raylan mulled that in silence for a minute – Tim wondered if he was considering how it might get _him_ rebuked for omitting that small detail in the first place. But then he shrugged affably and drank down the rest of his own beer. “Want me in the room?”

 

“Why? Do you think Art’ll try to beat it out of me?”

 

It was a rare treat to see Raylan Givens rendered speechless, but it occurred to Tim later that night, as he wearily sank down on his sofa, head in hands, considering yet another drink, that the brief flash of horror in the older marshal’s eyes really just made him feel shitty for saying it in the first place.

 

X---X

 

_Present_

 

“Your Chief Deputy mentioned you got into a short physical altercation in the office; was that with Raylan?”

 

“He brings it out in people.”

 

“How did he bring it out in you?”

 

Tim hesitated and ran a nervous hand over his face. “Pass.”

 

She blinked, briefly taken aback, but recovered well. Instead, she reached over for a pack of post-its and started jotting things down. “Just noting the topics we’re putting a hold on.”

 

“Yeah, but sticky notes?”

 

“I have a system.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Reggie leaned back in her swiveling chair and considered him thoughtfully. “So Raylan thinks that if he hadn’t walked into that bar, at that moment, seen you sitting there with another man, you wouldn’t be sitting here in my office today?”

 

“I guess. I try not to fathom the inner workings of Raylan’s mind too closely.”

 

“What did you mean, when you asked what he planned to do about the knowledge that you’re gay?”

 

“Ma’am… Reggie,” he corrected awkwardly at a pointed look, “I served six years in the Army under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, when anyone who knew could torpedo your otherwise gleaming career with one well-placed phone call.”

 

“So being protective of your sexuality has long been second-nature.”

 

He let out an exasperated huff of a breath and threw his hands up in frustration. “I just don’t want my personal shit at the office.”

 

“Did Raylan tell people what he had discovered about you?”

 

“No, but I told my boss anyway.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because it could have blown back onto Raylan for omitting details in his report.”

 

She cocked her head to the side curiously. “Raylan was willing to take that risk; did you not want to feel in his debt?”

 

Tim laughed. “I’ve saved that asshole’s life so many times, it really hadn’t occurred.”

 

“Then-”

 

“I just like things at work to be done by the book, okay?”

 

She shrugged. “Okay. Would you say you and Raylan are friends?”

 

“ _Friends_?” That drew him up short. “That’s weird.”

 

X---X

 

_Six Weeks Prior_

 

Chief Deputy Art Mullen glanced up at the shadow hovering in his doorway, bright and early Monday morning. He blinked in pleasant surprise that quickly tinged with suspicion; Tim was an unfailingly punctual sort, rarely an early sort. And today, he looked just a bit off. Exhausted, sullen.

 

“Hangover?”

 

His youngest deputy flipped him a dry grin. “Am I so predictable?” He didn’t exactly answer the question. Art briefly wondered if he were still a bit inebriated but just as quickly discarded the idea as unlike Tim as being late or early to work. “Can I…?” he gestured at the door.

 

He knew he was staring, but red flags were going up all over this. “Go ahead, son.” Tim closed the door but stayed hovering just inside it. Art nodded at the folder he had shifted from under his arm and was now fidgeting with. “What’s on your mind?”

 

Tim clung to the folder possessively when Art made to reach for it. He sat back and raised his brows, still more curious than admonishing. From the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the office beyond, and looked up to see Raylan stroll into the bullpen.

 

And then he saw Raylan cast about a moment, looking for something… saw his eyes land on Art’s office, linger on the man standing just inside it, and then dart to his boss’s with something bordering on guilt lying behind them.

 

“Aw, hell,” he wiped at his forehead, suddenly tired. “What trouble are you two in?”

 

“Chief?”

 

He nodded out towards the outer office. “You _and_ Raylan, here a half-hour early? Him casting you looks like a guilty accomplice?”

 

“Ah.” Tim’s lips pursed tightly after his succinct response. “No, no trouble. I hope.” He must’ve read Art’s intention of calling the cowboy into the office because he hastily sprung to action, slipping the folder across the desk and sinking heavily down into one of the soft chairs opposite. “I wanted a word about the Sawyer take-down.”

 

Art blinked. “Jesus, Tim, is that all? It was a Saturday night, you weren’t on-call, it’s not -”

 

“I was there.” He gestured roughly to the folder, and Art opened it cautiously.

 

“You shoot anybody?” Tim shook his head in irritation. “Then what’s…?” he paused, frowning. “This is the transcript of Raylan’s interview with him afterwards.”

 

Hands twisting in his lap, Tim shrugged. “A copy. Second page. I highlighted.”

 

He flipped the first page over, and skimmed a section, just a few comments back and forth; then he frowned, and read them more carefully the second time.

 

 

 **Sawyer** : I think I could’ve liked you in another life, Marshal.

 

 **Givens** : Considering your record, I’d rather not know where you’re going with that.

 

 **Sawyer** : Hey, now. Another life where you’re not a fed, not a life where I’m a fag.

 

 **Givens** : Well now, that was clever, given your particular criminal proclivities, hiding out in a gay bar. I mean, not clever enough, but…

 

 **Sawyer** : Entertaining for a few nights, anyway.

 

 **Givens** : Is LPD going to start matching up some unresolved reports of sexual assault to the dates you were in town?

 

 **Sawyer** : Hell no, man, I kept my head down. Sat in a corner and rebuffed any and all ambitions among the colorful clientele to suck my prick.

 

 **Givens** : That’s big of you. ‘Course, also a load of shit, I found you right at the bar.

 

 **Sawyer** : Yeah, after scaring that kid away. Shit, Marshal, tell me he didn’t have the fucking prettiest mouth, though.

 

 **Givens** : A little young for you, don’t you think?

 

 **Sawyer** : What happened to him? You haul him in, too, ‘case he might be an accomplice?

 

 **Givens** : Nah, could tell just looking at him that all he was guilty of was the misfortune of earning your attentions.

 

 **Sawyer** : Aw, I was gonna treat him real nice.

 

 **Givens** : Thought you weren’t gay.

 

 

Art looked up from his third read-through, found Tim staring determinedly at a smudge on the wall with all the intensity displayed when lining up the most perfect of shots. “Tim?”

 

“Thought you oughta know,” the young marshal spoke softly to the wall. “In case anyone thought to try to run down _that kid_.” He blinked twice, schooled his face, turned to Art, and asked in a perfect deadpan drawl, “Is my mouth really that pretty?”

 

“The prettiest,” Art assured him drily. “You shittin’ me?”

 

The dry, deadpan look disappeared instantly, was replaced by something cold and bitter deep behind his eyes. “No, sir, despite my father and the US Army’s best efforts to drum it out of me.”

 

The force of Art’s eye-roll seemed to take Tim by surprise, and he straightened, caught off-guard. “Not about being gay, knucklehead.” He paused. “No, you’re seriously telling me of all the gin-joints in Kentucky, this piss-ant fugitive piece of shit managed to pick the one you were in and sit down next to a goddamn federal marshal?” He made a noise that was uncomfortably close to a giggle and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, we could have a field day with the Cincinnati office over this one. We don’t even have to look for Ohio’s fugitives, they come straight to us! Say, Cincinnati’s sending some people to collect Sawyer in a couple hours, want to fuck with the sonuvabitch before he goes?”

 

“Ah… if it’s all the same…”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Art waved him off, “get back to work. And send Raylan in, would you?” Tim walked out, looking stiff and dumbfounded, Art just chuckling at this back, “God _damn_ , that is some funny shit.”

 

X---X

 

_Present_

 

The office was quiet when Tim got back from his _morning assignment_ , and he wondered if something had actually come up or if Art had sent Raylan off on a bullshit job to get him out from underfoot. Art and Rachel were in the conference room, and Tim slung his jacket over his chair and joined them.

 

“Where you been?” Rachel didn’t look up from the file she was perusing on their dumbass bail jumper of the day.

 

Art started to offer whatever errand he’d concocted to explain the hour and a half disappearance, but Tim was too exhausted to even consider how quickly that would become unbelievable after two or three appointments. “Therapy.”

 

She shot him a surprised sidelong glance, and then her eyes flickered over to Art’s clamped-shut mouth. “Is this something to do with punching Raylan last week?” She grinned. “Aw, Chief, we’ve all been thinking about it.”

 

“You’ve all been thinking about it?” he exclaimed. “I’m sorry, who here had to put up with his shit a decade before any of you ever heard his name?”

 

“C’mon, Art,” Raylan flipped his hat onto the table as he entered the room, collapsing into a chair with his usual sprawling swagger. “I was much less of a pain in the ass at Glynco. Plus, Rachel said I was cute.”

 

“ _Easy on the eyes_ ,” she reminded him. “Anyway, if we can get back to it?”

 

“Absolutely,” Raylan agreed, then swiveled around to face Art. “I need a week off.”

 

Art grinned. “Now _that’s_ funny.” Raylan just stared at him, and he paused. “Winona?”

 

“Gettin’ induced in three days. Something about her blood pressure and… puffy feet?”

 

Their boss nodded knowledgably. “Pre-eclampsia? Leslie had that with the youngest. Guess we better get your ass on a plane then, huh?”

 

Raylan nodded his thanks and sauntered off again to price some flights, while Art disappeared to get started on leave paperwork for him. Which left Tim and Rachel staring at a stack of files on the forgotten bail-jumper. “I was going to head out after lunch to start running some of Carson’s acquaintances.” The question was in her eyes, if not her tone.

 

“I know it hasn’t escaped your notice that I haven’t had assignment outside the office in three days.”

 

She nodded and just said simply, “I didn’t want to presume.”

 

He picked up a folder from the untouched pile, glanced at a few lines without really registering what was written there, and then closed it again and rubbed at his forehead. “I have PTSD.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Apparently, he just couldn’t stop, and found himself blurting, “I’m gay,” without really understanding why.

 

Rachel shot him a coy grin. “Damn, Tim, I was just asking you to check acquaintances with me, not out on a date.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

X---X


	2. Part 2

**Part 2**

_Present_

 

“Your boss said that he first grew concerned about your well-being after you acknowledged to him a couple months ago that you do suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Self-diagnosed, I gather?” He murmured an assent. “He said you mentioned it during a, um…” she consulted her notes, frowning. “I’m sorry, during an IED ambush?”

 

He nodded and fell to explaining. “An IED is a common tactic in asymmetric warf-”

 

“Right, sorry,” she smiled apologetically. “I do know that.” He flushed. Of course she knew that, she was a goddamn trauma counselor. “But this was… here in Lexington?”

 

“Harlan County,” he corrected.

 

“That happen a lot in Kentucky?”

 

He grimaced. “My first, anyway.”

 

“Want to tell me about what happened?”

 

His answering shrug was not deflection so much as disinterest. “This Detroit mob boss was trying to get his hands on a fugitive we’d apprehended down there. Chief and I took a decoy convoy while Raylan and Rachel went to ground with the fugitive, and we found ourselves in the poor graces of an Army vet who’d been operating with one of the… local shit-kickers.”

 

“And you took charge?”

 

“I…” he frowned. “Sure. I mean, as the only one with the relevant experience… I spotted the trap, and set up the cover, and rigged a Molotov cocktail to blow one of the cars. I think by then, they’d realized we didn’t have their man, anyway.”

 

“Still. You stepped up, kept your team alive -”

 

Tim cut her off. “I’m good at my job, Reggie, when I’m allowed to do it. I was good at my job, in the Army. I don’t need you to bolster my professional self-esteem.”

 

She accepted the rejection easily. “I’m sorry if I was being patronizing. I guess I’m just trying to understand why that specific incident led you to telling your boss about your PTSD suspicions, after all of the violent situations I gather you’ve been in during the three years you’ve worked in that office.”

 

“He was looking at me like I was crazy, figured I’d give myself an out. Fucking IEDs in Kentucky…”

 

Her answering smile was knowing, saw through him with an ease that made him vaguely uncomfortable. “You, Tim? Wanted an out? With your confidence and experience, your knowledge that another veteran was working for the other team, you needed an out?”

 

He looked down at his hands that he suddenly realized were clenched in his lap. Quickly releasing them, he rubbed them against the tops of his thighs and reluctantly met her green gaze again. “Can we add this to our postponed sticky-note?”

 

“I’d rather not,” she confessed, frowning. “This other man, who had served – did you know him?”

 

“In passing, during the investigation.”

 

“What were your interactions like?”

 

“Oh,” Tim leaned back, “you know, we’d get together for slumber parties and do each other’s hair, paint our nails…”

 

“Tim.”

 

He bit back a sigh and ran an anxious hand through his hair. “Our first meeting was friendly. Shot the shit, waiting for our respective shit-kickers -”

 

“Raylan?”

 

“You catch on fast,” he grinned approvingly. “He was curious about the job, I told him that the Marshals Service recruits a lot of vets.”

 

“And any subsequent meetings, or did your paths next cross when he tried to blow you up?”

 

He sat quietly for a long time under her earnestly curious stare, and he felt angry. Pinpointing exactly who he was angry with proved to be a somewhat nebulous task, but Raylan was always an easy answer, maybe Art right now, definitely the clueless woman sitting across from him.

 

“Tim?” He jerked in surprise, and added himself to that list. “Your boss started worrying about you after the incident with the IEDs. But that’s not when you started struggling, is it?”

 

The silence stretched on for another minute. His hands were threatening to clench up again, so he stood and shoved them in his pockets, then crossed over to the single window in the office. “May I?”

 

She nodded, and he drew up the blinds and looked down on the quiet mid-morning street, the occasional car turning into the drive down to his right, that led to the complex parking lot. “They say that being an enlisted soldier is like, among the worst jobs in America.”

 

“Who’s ‘they’?”

 

He shrugged. “I don’t know. The people who make the internet slideshows that you don’t really want to click through, and Jesus Christ, the ads, but you’re just dying to see if your college, town, career, whatever, made the cut.”

 

“I mostly watch videos of cats squeezing into progressively smaller boxes.”

 

He glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “I’ll have to remember that. Desk duty is getting really goddamn boring.” The analytical intensity of her gaze discomfited him, and he turned back to the street, unseeing. “Being a soldier sucks. They move you around all the time, station you halfway across the country from anywhere you know and anyone you love, you work long hours for little pay, get sent to a warzone every once in a while. Even when you don’t have to live in the barracks anymore, your private life is always subject to scrutiny, can affect your job, your rank, your pay…”

 

“You did it for six years,” she commented curiously.

 

“It sucks less, the longer you’re in,” he allowed. “And six years ain’t all that long. It takes a certain breed of person though, to really thrive in that environment. One who sees the authority structure, the discipline, as a net to catch you, rather than a cage to trap you inside.” He turned back around and leaned against the window, felt the cold glass through the back of his shirt. “Colton Rhodes was one of those people.” Hesitating, he glanced at her open notebook, the assortment of post-its pinned haphazardly around the pages. “I probably shouldn’t use names.”

 

She shrugged. “I won’t write any down. You know everything is confidential though.”

 

Tim nodded and returned to his seat, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees, speaking to the floor. “He, ah – slipped outside the safety net, I guess. They booted him for drug use. And he just couldn’t cut it in the real world. The military makes a big deal about all the _real life skills_ they’ll impart upon your young soldier, but really,” his tone was dry, disparaging, “going straight from high school to a place where they tell you when to eat, when to go to bed, when to exercise, ain’t gonna prepare you for shit. Lot of folks with _special skillsets_ like myself end up in merc work, wetwork. And some of those who don’t have skills all that special just end up petty criminals. Rhodes. His boss.”

 

“You seem to have made out alright,” Reggie commented lightly.

 

He grinned darkly. “Why? Because I found a legitimate job that would pay me to keep shooting people?” Quickly sobering though, he looked up and smile apologetically. “I’m not trying to say everyone gets out of the Army and turns to crime. Most don’t, o‘course. They just aren’t the ones who come across my desk, and I’m paid to be a cynic. Colton Rhodes though,” he sighed. “Colton Rhodes. He floundered. He was in a long time, probably up on fifteen years, and just couldn’t cope in the real world. And in a completely, fucked-all-to-hell, worlds colliding way, he started all,” he waved his hand vaguely around the office, “this.

 

“He killed someone,” he admitted aloud at last. “He killed someone important to me.”

 

X---X

 

_Five Weeks Prior_

 

Raylan gathered enough from Art to realize that his discussion with Tim had likely been anticlimactic for the former Ranger (“I mean shit, the thought had occurred,” Art confessed in between guffaws), but Tim remained perturbed, or at least sullen, for the rest of the day. Kept his head down at his desk, only spoke when spoken to, and monosyllabic at that.

 

And then his mood lasted another day, and then a week. When even Rachel noted his attitude ranging from short to indifferent on the following Monday, Art summoned Raylan back into his office after Tim disappeared for lunch.

 

“Did I say something? Or not say something? Did _you_ say something? Shit, Raylan, did you break Tim?”

 

Setting his hat down on the desk, Raylan accepted a small cup of Art’s desk bourbon and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. He was pissed at me that night for no especial reason, I thought it was some combination of defensiveness and embarrassment.”

 

“And now?”

 

“Goddamn, Art, I don’t know,” he repeated, no real vitriol behind the words. “I just have to infer that he really didn’t want anyone here to know.”

 

“Well,” Art shrugged, “he did serve six years under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the latent instinct is understandable.” Raylan continued to look uneasy, contemplative, and his boss sighed tiredly. “Something goosing your psychic neck hairs again?”

 

“Have my neck hairs ever led you astray?”

 

Art shot him a pointed look. “Who can tell, in between all the trouble your dick gets you in?”

 

Raylan held up his hands in a weak defense. “I’ll talk to him tonight.”

 

Except Tim, punctual about his lunch break of sixty minutes exactly as he was about arriving at eight every morning, didn’t show up at the end of his hour. When a second hour passed and three attempts to reach his cell had gone unanswered, Raylan shot a look at Art’s empty office and then a more furtive glance at Rachel, sitting quietly at her desk.

 

There was no outward indication that she had been paying him any mind, but she spoke to her computer screen when he looked her way. “Chief’s on a working lunch, he’ll probably be a while still.”

 

That was all Raylan needed to hear. “Keep calling him, would you?” And he stood, snagged his jacket and his hat, dialing an extension from his desk phone tucked under one ear. “Sherri? Yeah, can you get me a location on Deputy Gutterson’s phone and car? Thanks.”

 

He shrugged on the jacket, donned the hat, and snagged his keys from his desk drawer. “If Art comes back…”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll cover for you,” Rachel still stared determinedly at her screen, but finally paused and looked up. “What’s going on with him?”

 

“I really don’t know, and what little I do, I shouldn’t say.” His phone ringing cut off any reply she might have formulated, and he plucked it deftly off the receiver. “Sherri? Yeah.” Pause. “Well, what’s all the way out there?” Another pause, and then Raylan stilled, expression going distant, thoughtful. He opened the desk drawer again and dug around a minute before pulling out a yellowing envelope and shoving it into his jacket pocket. “Really? Huh.”

 

X---X

 

The kid working at the ammo shack looked nervous to see Raylan approach, but it quickly gave way to relief when he flashed his badge. “I’m looking for-”

 

“You Givens?” He blinked. “Talked to the lady Marshal, said you were coming.”

 

“Why did you..?”

 

The pimple-faced teen, probably too young to be working the rifle range, looked impatient though and jerked his thumb over his shoulder, towards the silent range beyond the small building. “He’s down there. Lane three.”

 

He tipped his hat in thanks and strode off, trying not to let the sinking feeling in his stomach compound with his goosed neck hairs before he had any sort of clue what was up. And on the surface, as he rounded the barrier that denoted the edge of the first lane of the long rifle-range, nothing seemed particularly amiss. There was no one firing and at first glance, there looked to be no one there at all.

 

But then he saw the slump of a dark-clad back resting against the wooden post separating the second and third lanes; the rifle lay beside the platform, forgotten. A familiar black, government-issued cell phone lay on the firing platform, and it suddenly occurred to Raylan that the kid in the shack had probably answered it when the shooting stopped and it continued to be ignored.

 

When its owner continued to ignore it, sitting unresponsive on the ground, knees pulled up to his chest and head buried in his arms, for some time apparently. Only the marshal jacket and top of a familiar head assured Raylan of the identity of the drawn figure before him.

 

“Okay,” he ran a hand through his own lightly greying hair. “Okay.”

 

 

Tim didn’t move in the five minutes Raylan took to confer first with Rachel, and then with the kid at the shack of an office at the head of the range. When he came back, he cautiously settled down on the ground opposite the younger man and looked over the details of the scene he had skipped before. Unused ammo, discarded tripod… a stack of standard target papers pinned into the grass by a pocket knife. The top sheet had a cluster of holes in Tim’s usually uncanny precision in both the head and the heart areas; Raylan had no doubt that the rest of them looked much the same.

 

He reached over to unpin the stack; a hand darted out and seized his wrist in a brutal grip, and he blinked owlishly over at Tim’s wild-eyed stare, squinting slightly against the sudden light after having his head so long buried in his arms.

 

“Jesus, Raylan,” he breathed.

 

He looked pointedly down at the vise-like grip still holding his arm; Tim let go so suddenly he might have been burned. “Alright, there?” Tim sat up and ran his hands over his face. “Where you been?” Raylan asked softly.

 

Instinct took over. He could practically see the walls coming down as Tim looked around, checked his watch, and swore colorfully under his breath. The rifle was half broken down, the target sheets shoved unceremoniously in the bag, before Raylan even registered the younger man springing to his feet and attacking the task with harsh efficiency.

 

“Tim, wait…”

 

“I’m late,” he snapped, puzzling the pieces of the weapon into the carry case.

 

Raylan grabbed him by the sleeve of his jacket, caught the noticeable stiffening before Tim shook him off. “Tim.” His voice was low and, he hoped, more serious than his coworker usually took him. “You’re…” he checked his own watch, “nearly two hours late. This wasn’t losing track of time. Now sit your skinny ass down and talk to me, or I swear to God I’ll call Art and tell him to have Bertha waiting at your desk next time you walk in.” Tim turned sharply at the mention of the psychologist who worked some with the office, look laden with resentment and something bordering on betrayal. Raylan remained impassive. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

 

The war raged across Tim’s face for a few more seconds before he sighed in resignation and slumped to the ground, leaning his head back against the firing platform with a dull _thud_. “Whad’you want?”

 

“I want to know who you’re shooting at.”

 

“Come again?”

 

Raylan reached into the duffel and pulled out the smashed stack of targets. He leafed through them quickly. “Bill says that you-”

 

“Who?”

 

“Bill. Kid at the office. If you can call it that.”

 

“Brad.”

 

“Sure. Brad says you were focused on firing, hit all your marks, and then just tuned out the world for an hour when you were done. So – where’s your head? Not on your quarterly qualifications, I’ll wager.”

 

“It’s really none of your goddamn busi-”

 

“Do you have PTSD, Tim?”

 

Their eyes locked, challenge and ire burning respectively. “I think,” Tim stated slowly, coldly, “I’ll take my chances with Bertha. If it’s all the same.”

 

Raylan carried on as if he hadn’t heard. “Thing is,” he mused, “I been wracking my brain on the drive over here, trying to decide why someone with PTSD would go from the Army to a profession where they keep dealing with all manner of violence and depravity. ‘Less of course, it isn’t the violence that sets them off.”

 

Tim finished packing up his gear, steadfastly ignoring the older marshal still sitting on the ground. He was moving quickly across the field moments later, leaving Raylan behind without a word.

 

 

When Raylan reached the parking area, he was at least relieved to see that Tim was grudgingly waiting for him to come move his car from where it blocked in Tim’s SUV against the fence rail, rather than simply back into it and trust in his vehicle’s superior size to cut him free. He climbed into the passenger side of the SUV first though and tucked a folded envelope into the glove compartment.

 

“The hell is that?”

 

“An extension of trust,” Raylan was already back out the door, leaning in. “An old letter my aunt never delivered; could never deliver,” he amended. “It got mixed up in some of her old hidden things in the Indian Line house, only just made its way back to me ‘bout a month ago.

 

“Read it. Or don’t,” he shrugged. “And for Christ’s sake, Gutterson, go home, you look like shit. I’ll tell Art lunch put you off. Slow day anyway.”

 

And in a flash, he was gone, leaving a confused and skeptical young marshal in his wake.

 

X---X

 

The next day, Tim was waiting for him at the end of the shift, leaning nonchalantly against the driver door of his SUV parked two spaces down from the Lincoln. He fell into step behind Raylan and then slid into the passenger seat uninvited and unannounced. Raylan shot him a sideways look under raised brows.

 

Tim popped open the glove compartment and mimicked Raylan’s actions of the day prior, sliding the envelope inside. “Figured you’d want that back.”

 

“Meh.”

 

“I’m not entirely sure what you meant to prove with your long-lost teenage love letter. Explains a lot though.” Tim grinned, staring straight ahead out the windshield and watching one of the court clerks get into her soccer-mom-van parked opposite. “Imagining the look on Art’s face if he knew is pretty worth it, in any case.”

 

“It’s not a love letter,” Raylan scowled, starting the car. “And I didn’t mean to _prove_ anything, I just -”

 

“ _Look, I was infatuated with my male friend once, and he might have felt the same_ – honestly though, that’s hardly news, you both still are – _we’re just the same, Tim._ ”

 

A low growl formed in Raylan’s throat; he shoved it down, forcefully. “Don’t be a dick. I only meant to say that you ain’t the only one with a father who’d have happily shot you, had he found out you’d rather spend your free time with the boy you stood shoulder-to-shoulder with all day in the mine, rather than the pretty blonde down the street always chasing after you.”

 

Tim seemed to consider that a moment. With a noncommittal huff, he opened the passenger door, paused, then shut it again and murmured, “My father _did_ find out. Guessed, anyway; why d’you think he shipped me off to Basic Training in the first place?”

 

X---X

 

Tim didn’t show up for work on Friday that week. Art said he called off for a _mental health day_ with a tone that suggested he couldn’t decide if he thought Tim was just hungover.

 

Raylan thought it was Tim’s roundabout way of answering his PTSD question from Monday at the range. Mid-morning, when both Art and Rachel were out of the office on assorted errands, he quietly called and asked for the location of Tim’s phone again, trusting that Sherri down the hall in IT had no idea that Deputy Gutterson was not at work and theoretically not subject to harassment by his colleagues.

 

She surprised him again with the answer, though this time he hadn’t wandered so far from home. The Lexington National Cemetery was only a mile down the road from the courthouse.

 

X---X

 

He wasn’t especially surprised when Tim showed up at the door of his motel the next night, though the immediate demand of, “C’mon, let’s get some fucking food,” followed by a look of unreasonable impatience at the time it took Raylan to throw on a clean shirt and shoes caught him somewhat off-guard.

 

Tim drove to a steakhouse near the campus, a block from the bar where their paths had crossed two weeks earlier in the oddest of circumstances. It was the sort of place where the music was loud, the servers line-danced, and peanut shells littered the floor, and Raylan wondered if Tim had chosen it because it would be a hard place to overhear them talk, or because it was an unlikely place to cross paths with someone else they knew. Both, maybe. Either way, Raylan was pretty sure he was the oldest person in the restaurant by twenty years, save Tim who could have passed for an undergraduate anyway.

 

Their tattooed, young waitress – Candie, according to her nametag, heart dotting the i – got them settled in with a beer each. Raylan stretched an arm out across the top of the booth to his side, sprawling in that very precise way of his. Tim sat straight, eyes roaming his environment for several long moments until they came to settle almost reluctantly on the man across the table.

 

“You ever been in the military, Raylan?” Tim’s lips quirked, like he was laughing at his own joke, and he put down his beer and ran a hand through his hair. “God, they’d bounce you in a minute, when’s the last time you actually followed an order to the letter?”

 

He scowled. “As you’ve answered your own question,” he waved him on impatiently.

 

The grin remained but it turned bitter around the edges. “Women comprise something like fourteen percent of the Army. When I was in, none in the combat branches at all.” He took a long pull from the bottle, put it down again, and ran his hands down his face, anxious. “Take a violent profession that’s all about control, aggression, imagine how it gets multiplied in the infantry. Arrogant sons o’bitches.”

 

Raylan watched him quietly, curiously.

 

“When my dad realized I _wasn’t quite right_ , I think he thought the Army would either shame it out of me or at least make me so goddamn repressed that he couldn’t tell anymore.” He chuckled darkly. “I found a kindred spirit at Basic, reveled in every sloppy hookup that would have gotten us beaten up by the rest of our platoon and then sent home… and then the sonuvabitch went and dropped dead of a stroke two weeks before graduation.”

 

Raylan cocked a brow. “Saving himself the trouble of the heart attack had he heard what you just told me?”

 

“Wily bastard.” Raylan grinned. “The obvious choice at that point would have been to not sign my contract, go home, and forget about the Army altogether.”

 

The brow rose a notch higher. “But for your kindred spirit?”

 

“Not even,” Tim drained the rest of his bottle and sat back in the booth. His eyes were dark, hooded, flickering. Always so steady, Tim, fiercely protective of his privacy, was the most nervous Raylan had ever seen him, talking about his background in so candid terms. “Illicit dalliances aside, I was _good_ at being a soldier. What better way to spite the ever-loving fuck out of the old man than the go all the way with it?”

 

“And so was born Ranger-Sniper Tim.”

 

“Took some time, but.” He paused, considering, and Raylan could not blame him for the reticence. Reflecting back on the early years with Arlo was hardly his favorite past time, and the office already knew entirely too much about his personal life story. “The real victory over the old bastard was doing it all without repressing my sexuality, just compartmentalizing it. We weren’t stationed together after Basic, but my… my friend and I… we reconnected when we could.”

 

“Was that Mark?” Raylan asked before he could rein in his nosiness.

 

Tim looked unsurprised though, just huffed a humorless laugh and tipped the empty bottle towards him. “I think you know where this story is going, at any rate.”

 

“I’ve made some guesses,” Raylan admitted, “but I wouldn’t presume to have connected my dots in the right order.”

 

The waitress came back for their orders. Raylan asked for fried chicken and Tim (“that shit’ll kill you, man”), a steak cooked medium-rare. He called her back and asked for two more beers, and then sat in stoic silence until they appeared.

 

“What the hell are you even doing?” he asked, bored, eyes fixed on a basketball game he wasn’t really seeing on the nearby TV. “You take a psych class as a fallback in case law enforcement didn’t help you resolve _your_ daddy issues?”

 

“Unless shrinks get to shoot annoying patients, I’ll stick to being a marshal.” He shrugged best he could with his arm still draped casually on the booth. “What am _I_ doing?” he repeated. “Eating dinner at _your_ invitation at a restaurant of _your_ choice talking about a subject _you_ brought up.” Tim grimaced, eyes still stuck on the game. “Tim.” He drew the younger man’s eyes reluctantly back down. “I’m not asking you to tell me all this – I’ll listen if you want to. But from the last two weeks, everyone can see you’re hurting and, forgive the presumption but it’s obvious you need to talk to _somebody_.”

 

“A _professional_?”

 

“I guess that’s up to you.” Raylan cocked his head sideways, contemplative. “I’m getting the sense though that the system has entirely let you down. Or you just don’t trust it. Or both.”

 

Tim’s lips quirked sardonically. “Your spidey senses are really tingling on this, aren’t they? Warn me before you get one of Art’s infamous marshal-stiffies, huh?” Raylan sighed. “Tell me about Boyd Crowder.”

 

“Speaking of the price of tea in China.”

 

“I don’t think that’s quite how it goes.”

 

It was probably only fair though and, really, Raylan had opened up this particular can of worms all on his own. “The night a mine fell down around us, I kissed him, he hit me, I left Harlan, and he left my aunt a letter she never delivered and that I didn’t see for more than twenty years.”

 

Tim blinked, then let out a short, honest bark of a laugh. “Jesus, you suck at tales of doomed romance and unrequited love. Read some more books written for teenage girls.”

 

“Let me know when you return them all to the library. Boyd was…” he struggled for words to explain, words that would make any amount of sense to someone a quarter-century removed from them, who knew Raylan and Boyd as they were now, not as they were as young men fresh out of high school, working long hours in a grueling trade. “Well, he was an enigma. Still is, but there was less bullshit about it back then. And without the swastika tattoo. Anyway.

 

“We’d never much interacted in school – I expect through the efforts of administration who were terrified of our fathers and didn’t want us making similar mischief at school – and then found ourselves as the only two kids working a shift at the Joseph’s Creek Mine, surrounded by a bunch of bitter forty-somethings who wanted us to accept that we were Harlan boys and Harlan boys worked the mines, and someday, we’d be just as bitter and forty-something as them.” He smiled self-deprecatingly at that. “I won’t deny that happened anyway, but at least it didn’t happen in a goddamn coal mine.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

“Boyd though- he knew I wasn’t long for Harlan, or at least wouldn’t let me give up hope of getting out. And he was so damn smart even then, and I knew he could do anything if he’d just get out too, except… well, he had one big disadvantage there that I didn’t.” Tim’s brows rose curiously. “Motivation. He was hardly an enterprising young criminal at eighteen, nineteen, but he did love his father, respected the man, respected that Bo had accomplished so much, so to speak. But Bo and Arlo were similar enough that he understood me, encouraged me, when I had no one else, save Helen. My mother had already taken ill and didn’t have the strength to challenge Arlo anymore.

 

“So,” he sighed, “Boyd was a breath of fresh air in a stagnant town, in a dusty mine, and somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that the pleasure I got from seeing him, speaking with him, the fear I felt when he took his Emulex down in the mine until the moment his light shone back out the hole with him shouting warnings under it, that those were maybe feelings of something somewhat beyond friendship.”

 

His narrative halted for a few minutes as the waitress reappeared with some bread. Raylan thought Tim seemed more at ease than before after a bit of reciprocation. He wondered if it were on account of the trust being imparted, or the potential leverage it afforded him.

 

Not that he thought Tim would ever screw him over by telling Art or Vasquez about the finer details of his past with Boyd, but if it provided him a sense of security for sharing his own demons, what the hell.

 

“Anyway,” he spoke around a dinner roll. “The Myrtle Creek collapse happened about a year after we’d both started in the mines. Boyd got me out and when we got free of the chaos in the aftermath, we drove out to Arlo’s house – he was doing one of many short stints in the pen – and just sat on the porch drinking pilfered moonshine after we let my momma fuss over us a bit. And then it was late enough that she’d gone to bed, and some combination of the adrenaline, the alcohol, the gratitude… I forgot myself. He hit me and ran off. Two days later, Helen gave me some money she’d started saving some years back to get us away from Arlo; knew by then that her sister wasn’t ever going to be able to leave. I came up to Lexington, got a shitty job and a shitty shared apartment, cajoled my way into the next semester at UK, and didn’t go back to Harlan until, well…”

 

Tim finished off the second beer and stated blandly, “Goddamn, that’s a depressing story. Why didn’t your aunt ever give you the letter?”

 

A hint of color rose in Raylan’s cheeks. “Because I never got in touch, never even gave an address or a phone number to reach me. Helen went to great lengths to get word to me that my momma died ten years later and, by then, Boyd was in and out of the Army, in and out of prison, and already starting up his commandos. Maybe with her sister dying and all, she just forgot about it, but I suspect she never intended on telling me at all after all that shit. Probably lost track of it along the way. It was in a hidey-hole in her old house, where she lived before marrying Arlo. After the incident with the oxy clinic, they tossed the place and the few of her effects that got found were piled in with all the evidence and only got sorted out recently.”

 

“And you never told him?”

 

Raylan snorted a laugh. “Christ, no. Anyway, I think the whole _bi-curious_ thing stops being cute after college.”

 

His words took a moment to register, and then Tim blinked up at him in surprise. “It wasn’t just Boyd?”

 

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “I think maybe it was, and it just took me a few years of lackluster one-nighters to realize.”

 

Realization and something uncomfortably close to glee were forming in Tim’s eyes though. “UK, early nineties. Holy hell, you weren’t shitting me about the bar owner, were you? What’s his name – Greg?”

 

“I mean, it’s been a couple decades.”

 

“He a lackluster one-nighter?”

 

“Mighta been a two-or-three nighter.”

 

“And twenty years later, you ran into one another in Lexington, he still remembered you, told you to come by for a drink at his establishment, and you said _no, sorry, I married a woman, divorced her, am sleeping with her again, all while nearly compromising every aspect of my job with my dick in some capacity or other. Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea_.”

 

“More or less, except I did go get a drink. It was free.”

 

“Free or _services rendered_?”

 

Raylan laughed. “Fuck off, Gutterson.”

 

They enjoyed the rest of the meal in relative silence, the occasional quip about work, about the game being broadcast, but it was a comfortable silence. Raylan’s one attempt to reopen the topic of Tim’s years in the Army were met with a calm but firm, “Not right now,” and he nodded and continued eating.

 

 

Tim drove back out to Raylan’s motel and they sat quietly in the car a few minutes even after Tim rejected Raylan’s offer of _something a little stronger_. He seemed to be building up to saying something, each attempt ending with a bitten-back sigh. “You gonna be alright?” Raylan asked at last, aiming for casual and landing too close to skeptical for comfort.

 

“Yeah,” he answered the direct question automatically. “Look, Raylan – I appreciate that I went a bit off the reservation, and that you’ve just been looking to drag me back without turning it into a _thing_ for work. But I’m good now, alright?”

 

“Re-compartmentalized?” Raylan asked softly.

 

“Something like that,” Tim assured him, oblivious to the vague disappointment and concern flickering through the older man’s eyes. “All the shit these last few months with Mark and Colton Rhodes, and then you walking into that goddamn bar… but it’s done. My head’s on straight.”

 

“You convincing me or yourself?”

 

After Tim stiltedly suggested it was time for Raylan to get out of his car, he stood on the porch in the flickering light and watched the dark SUV peel away, his marshal-spidey senses tingling harder than ever.

 

“Well,” he sighed, as the vehicle turned sharply onto the main road, “shit.”

 

X---X

 

_Present_

 

“Raylan factors a lot into your narrative, for someone you profess not to be a friend.”

 

“Small office.” She cocked a brow. “He asserts himself into situations,” Tim elaborated grumpily.

 

“Mostly, it sounds like he was worried for you.” Tim shrugged indifferently. “Why did you seek him out, when you told him about your experience at Basic Training, and asked him about his old friend?”

 

He’d been waiting for that question since he’d started spilling the tale of that bizarre meal, and he still had no particular answer. “I honestly can’t say. Satisfying my own curiosity and trying to head off his, I guess.”

 

“You don’t get close to your coworkers,” Reggie surmised, a trace of a question in her words. “But Raylan knew who Mark was.”

 

“Lexington PD called the office when his body was found; he died while trying to send me a text.”

 

“What was it?”

 

He pursed his lips, not sure if she would recognize how damning this tale was. “The name of an airfield we both deployed through in Afghanistan. Bagram.” He hesitated. “Mark and Rhodes’ paths crossed once before, at the VA clinic. Rhodes claimed he suffered from Bagram Lung. Was probably just there looking for a dealer.”

 

“Did you tell LPD what the text meant?”

 

“No. It never would have been enough to even issue a warrant to look for a murder weapon.”

 

“Did Raylan know about the connection between the two men?” He shook his head. “Did anyone?”

 

“A couple people found out later, when I got Rhodes but, somehow, I think it slipped their minds. I doubt it made it into a formal report.”

 

Reggie paused, brows furrowed slightly. “You arrested him?” Tim just gave her a look. “You killed him? For revenge?”

 

“No,” he shook his head slowly back and forth. “Well- not entirely. I tracked him trying to hunt down a young woman the Marshals Service was also looking for, in connection to the _other_ fugitive we’d gotten out of Harlan. Had my boss known about Mark, they’d have pulled me from the case, so I guess I can’t deny that I _wanted_ to be the one to find the son of a bitch, but…”

 

She waited a moment. “But?”

 

“He called it,” Tim shrugged. “He raised his weapon. It was justified.”

 

X---X


	3. Part 3

**Part 3**

_Present_

“Jesus fuck, finally.”

 

Raylan turned as he hung his jacket on the back of his chair and chucked his hat to the side of the desk. His smile was easy, but exhaustion was evident in his hooded eyes. “Miss me?”

 

Tim swiveled his chair around and shook his head. “You have no idea,” he fiddled a pen between his fingers as he looked over the new father. “Rachel keeps asking for my advice on fashion and interior design.”

 

Raylan choked on a sip of scalding coffee while Rachel mumbled, “Fuck off, Gutterson,” without looking away from her computer. He was spared a reply when Art shouted for him, but Rachel halted him after two steps. “Hey, cowboy – picture?”

 

“Thought you’d never ask.” He pulled out his phone and tossed it over to Rachel.

 

She took a moment to flip through, laughed, and handed it across to Tim. “Winona looks, ah… displeased.”

 

“Winona did not feel the _entire_ event needed to be visually documented.”

 

“Well, your little girl’s adorable.”

 

“Oh, is that what we’re looking at?” Tim tilted the phone a bit sideways, squinting. “She looks like an alien. An angry little alien.”

 

“You’re such a dick.” Raylan snatched the phone back and studied the picture Tim had been assessing. “Oh, never mind, she totally does there. Supposedly her head won’t stay all…”

 

“Alien?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The photo sharing was reiterated in Art’s office, followed by a quick interrogation about “What the hell kind of a name is Willa?”

 

“Winona’s father was named William; her mother was lobbying for Wilhelmina.”

 

“Willa is a _gorgeous_ name, Raylan, pass my love on, would you?”

 

The two men settled down in their respective chairs, Raylan steadily nursing his coffee to try to compensate for the fact that his flight from Miami had landed after two in the morning, on account of some storm delays. He leaned forward and pitched his voice low. “Tim doin’ okay?”

 

“He’s still on desk duty.” Raylan raised an expectant brow and Art smiled drily. “It’s been a while since I read the boss’s handbook, but I’m pretty sure discussing my underlings’ personal matters is highly frowned upon. I do have a bone to pick with you, though. Shut the door.”

 

Raylan stood and did as told, but turned a peeved eye on his boss. “Goddamn, Art, I’ve been in the office two minutes, that’s got to be a new record.”

 

Art quieted him with a stern look. A serious enough look to make Raylan hesitate. “Why didn’t _you_ tell me something was wrong?”

 

“What happened to _discussing personal matters_?”

 

His look turned rebuking. “Raylan. There are some things the big boss man _needs_ to know.” Raylan spread his hands defensively. “Tim finally told me about the day you went looking for him at the rifle range. _That_ is the kind of thing I’m talking about, and you’re smart enough to know the difference.”

 

“Chief, an asshole here would tell you that you said yourself that he’d seemed _off_ long before I ever noticed anything. Plus, he _told you_ he had PTSD; when I asked, he jerked me around for a month.”

 

“Good thing there ain’t an asshole here then, huh?”

 

X---X

 

“You told me last week a little bit about your experiences in the Army.” Tim looked up from the speck on his shoe he’d been staring at, running out of relatively innocuous topics to discuss. Five sessions, five hours in, he supposed there was only avoiding it for so long. “You also offered a bit of insight about your father,” she prompted gently.

 

“He’s not worth talking about,” Tim shrugged dully. “Miserable bastard.”

 

“He encouraged your enlistment?”

 

He barked a laugh. “Encouraged is… one way of putting it.” Reggie had that patient but expectant look that he knew too well now, and he sighed. “He’d been in the Army, Vietnam. Got to know the local recruiter, probably from spending his days drowning his miserable ass in booze at the VFW, essentially signed the paperwork for me when I was seventeen and just shy of finishing high school.”

 

“You still took the aptitude tests, though. You still went.”

 

“Well, sure. Even if I couldn’t cut it through Basic, it was still a couple months away from home. Make some money, start figuring out how to _really_ get away.”

 

“Your father was abusive?”

 

“Whatever gave you that idea,” he deadpanned. She looked on, oh-so-patient. “My mother died in a car crash when I was two. Rumor had it that he was happy before then.”

 

“Verbal or physical?”

 

He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, we ran the gamut.”

 

“Sexual?”

 

He blinked. “Christ, no. Shit, even if the fucker’d had the inclination, he probably thought it was contagious.”

 

Reggie stared a moment, and then actually laughed softly under her breath when he offered a wry smile. “I’m going to assume you never _told_ him you were gay; how did he know, did you have boyfriends in high school, get caught… looking at something, someone…?”

 

Tim let out an honest laugh. “Where are you from, doc?”

 

“Ohio. Small northwest town, near Toledo.”

 

“I don’t know how you do it up there. But in rural Arkansas…” he trailed off. “Well. I was a quiet kid, just wanted to spend my time running and listening to music, took my fantasy books to read at the high school football games, and by the end of senior year, I had neither knocked up nor proposed to a girl, so that was pretty much that, far as he was concerned.”

 

She accepted his half-assed explanation without further comment (though her post-its were undergoing some rearrangement, and it really tore at his self-restraint not to drag his chair over to her desk and snatch the notebook from under her nose).

 

When she was done, she looked up and clasped her hands atop the open page, as if she’d read his mind. “So your first relationship with another man was Mark.”

 

“Relationship?” He weighed that word for a moment, then shook his head. “Six years of intermittent visits worked around leave blocks, deployments… spending far more time and energy reassuring the world that we were just Army buddies than we ever did being able to be anything else. After Basic, we were very strict about… things.”

 

“So you were… distance lovers?”

 

“We periodically had sex,” Tim stated blandly. “Call it what you like.”

 

“You said six years.” He sat, stoic. “And in the three years between leaving the Army and his death?”

 

For a long minute, she held his dark glare unapologetically. He broke the contest when he again noticed his hands fisting against his legs, and he flexed them out and stood, crossing back to the window and opening the blinds without asking permission this time.

 

It was snowing. First of the season. Mostly, it just reminded him of miserable days high up a cold mountain, hunting one man down like a dog while the forces back at the Kandahar airfield dealt with rockets and car bombs and snipers of their own.

 

It’d been a beautiful shot. His last, too.

 

He turned sharply away and ran a cold hand over his face. “Mark was discharged with an injury a couple months before I separated. By the time I was out, he was addicted to OxyContin and was… unpredictable, unreliable. Out of control. I went practically straight to Glynco, in Georgia, for Marshals training.”

 

“But then you came to Lexington, where… I gather?... he lived.”

 

“He grew up around here; parents still live a ways out of town. It was on the list of open posts. I thought…” he bit back a sigh. “I don’t know what I thought. I tried. He was a mess, and I was too detached to figure out what to do about it.”

 

Reggie moved her notes aside and leaned forward, waiting until Tim caught her gaze and held it. “There comes a time, Tim… even when dealing with addiction, or coping with depression, anxiety… there’s a point where the help of others can’t drag us out of the spiral. Where our own choices have to make that final leap, no matter how desperately the people we love help us, or want to help us.”

 

The last minutes of their hour ticked away in silence.

 

X---X

 

“How’s things?”

 

Tim looked up from his solitaire game and stared across the room a moment, before reluctantly turning to the desk next to him. “Things?”

 

Raylan shrugged unapologetically. “You look bored.”

 

“Nah,” Tim glanced back and moved a card across the screen. “Freecell requires strategy, patience, foresight, all great applications of years of _very_ expensive training I’ve undergone through the generosity of the United States Army and the Marshals Service.” He clicked out and whirled his chair around to face the neighboring cubicle. “Want to rephrase that question and ask what’s _really_ on your mind?”

 

He was shameless, and took just a moment to glance around for anyone else in earshot. “Okay. How’s therapy? I miss having you out in the field.”

 

“Oh, it’s great. We talk about my insecurities about that time I lost at the deer hunter game in the arcade, in between covering all the times my dad never hugged me.”

 

Raylan’s expression didn’t really change, but he tilted his head slightly to the side and tapped idly at his desk for a moment. “Am I not supposed to ask? I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking for -”

 

“Jesus Christ, would you _stop_?” A couple of eyes flickered over towards them from the other side of the bullpen, and Raylan’s darted over Tim’s right shoulder, probably checking to see if Art was watching them. The quick wide-eyed look of innocence told Tim that yes, Art was. “You have no filter, you don’t need to suddenly acquire one for my sake. You’re allowed to ask.”

 

“And you’re allowed to respond by being a smart-ass?”

 

“Well, yeah.”

 

“Okay, then. Is it helping?”

 

Tim looked pointedly around the quiet office. “Still sitting at this desk, ain’t I?” He paused, then added, “You’d like her. The shrink. Too bad I already cock-blocked that one by telling her what a pain in the ass you are.”

 

“Aw,” Raylan smirked, “you told your therapist about me? Tim, I’m flattered.”

 

“It’s a good deflection technique, all flash and little substance.”

 

“Well, ouch.” The hurt puppy dog look only lasted a moment though, before Raylan’s brow furrowed and he turned deadly serious. “Can I ask you something, Tim?”

 

Mentally bracing himself, he returned cautiously, “Can’t guarantee I’ll answer.”

 

“Hm. Did you really once lose at the deer hunting game?”

 

A loud, honest laugh escaped him, one that even surprised Raylan. “Lowest goddamned score, against a bunch of guys whose fire groupings were so bad the Rangers almost didn’t take ‘em.”

 

X---X

 

“We didn’t talk about Raylan last week,” Reggie prompted as Tim settled himself into his usual seat. Always the chair, the utilitarian straight-backed, uncomfortable piece of furniture; the couch on the adjacent wall was fastidiously ignored. Her tone was curious, amused. “I’ve been enjoying the tales of your misadventures.”

 

He waved her off. “Eh. He got boring. Was gone for a while down in Florida while his twice-adulterous ex-wife, who dumped him for a second time shortly after telling him he knocked her up, had their baby.”

 

She blinked and then grinned. “ _That’s_ boring?”

 

“Came back all sappy smiles and sentimental, and sits at his desk and watches videos of the thing all day. Just sleeping. And then tries to show them to everyone else in the office. Is there ever going to be some great evolutionary shift in the human race where new parents realize that their kids are only cute to them?” She stared at him, a trace of amusement flickering through her green eyes. Without looking away, Tim said blandly, “Oh, shit. Are those your kids?” and jerked his head towards the solitary concession to personal details on her desk, a framed picture of two freckled young boys.

 

“They are.”

 

“They’re cute.”

 

She just snorted and shook her head. “You can’t even see the picture from over there,” she observed after a moment. “You saw it when you were standing at the window before.” He shrugged. “Do you remember specific details about it?”

 

“You want their hair colors, shirt designs, or to know that the little’un’s rabbit has a hole in its right ear? Stuffing’s coming out.”

 

Her expression was torn between impressed and discomfited. “Learned skill, or do you have an eidetic memory?”

 

“Well. Learned, but learned because they thought I had an aptitude. Situational awareness being more than averagely key to being a sniper. Lots of folks can _make_ the shot; it’s getting in position and the fucking _waiting_ that’s the challenge.”

 

And just like that, she’d turned it back around to talking about the Army. “You implied that aspiring to become a Ranger was born somewhat from spite.” His lips pressed together, but he did not deny it. “What is that process like?”

 

He frowned lightly. “Which process?”

 

“Becoming a Ranger.”

 

“It’s several processes, and even then, you aren’t really a Ranger until you serve _in_ the regiment. You’ve got to get through your Basic Training, and your individual branch and job-specific training, and if you’re really ambitious, you apply to go down to Fort Benning for Airborne School. Once you finish that, if you’re a _masochist_ , you can apply for Ranger School, to become qualified. Two months of getting your ass kicked, starvation, sleep-deprivation…” He paused, considered, and grinned. “’Course, that’s for the ones who don’t wash out. Guy in my class showed up, got sent home the next morning because he packed the wrong underwear.”

 

The expression on her face suggested she was trying to decide if he was screwing with her. “Sounds like he dodged a bullet, in any case,” she offered. “Was Mark a Ranger too?”

 

His brow furrowed deeply. “No. Why?”

 

She looked taken aback by the question. “Just curious, I guess. Were you never stationed together again after Basic?”

 

“No. He stayed there – Oklahoma, field artillery post. I went to Arizona. Military intelligence. Our careers went in pretty separate directions.”

 

“Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought you said you were deployed together at…” she glanced down, “Bagram.”

 

His jaw tightened, and the urge to yank her notebook out from under her hands threatened to overcome him yet again. “Kandahar,” he corrected stiltedly. “Bagram was just the waypoint. His brigade was there out of El Paso. I was Special Operation Forces by then, we moved around a lot, got sent where we were needed. Landed in Kandahar when things got hairy.”

 

“How many deployments did you have?”

 

“Three. Afghanistan, Iraq, and back again.”

 

“Which was this?” He looked down and put his energy into holding his hands steady in his lap. “Tim?

 

“The third,” he snapped with a bit more force than intended. “The shitty one. Shitt _ier_ one,” he corrected drily. “The one that nearly cost Mark his leg and got him hooked on a drug that eventually killed him, in its own way.”

 

“And what did it cost you?”

 

X---X

 

_Four Weeks Prior_

 

Tim showed up at work two days later with a shadow on his left cheek but otherwise back to his usual dry, sarcastic, pain-in-the-ass self. It wasn’t until mid-morning that he got fed up with Raylan’s not-so-discreet glances, and swiveled in his chair and fixed his fellow marshal with a cool stare.

 

“Somethin’ I can help you with?”

 

“Nope,” Raylan returned his gaze back to his computer, where he was running a list of a parolee bank robber’s known associates. “Just trying to decide if you missed a spot shaving or found yourself on the receiving end of a well-deserved slap this weekend.”

 

Rachel glanced over from his other side in mild surprise, and then scowled lightly at the youngest member of the office. He just fixed Raylan with a bullshitting grin.

 

“What makes you think it was well-deserved?”

 

“I know you’re a pain in _my_ ass.”

 

“Maybe that was the idea.”

 

Raylan turned, paused, frowned, considered, and then turned back to his computer with a tinge of color in his cheeks. Tim chuckled darkly and turned back to his own work. Rachel just watched them both a minute and muttered under her breath about working with children.

 

 

Raylan got his revenge three days later when, at the end of a casual chat in the conference room about the day’s operations, Rachel remembered something.

 

“I almost forgot – Raylan,” he glanced up from the file on a particularly homely bail-jumper, “This morning I talked to the man who owns the bar where we took down Sawyer two weeks ago. Gregory Moreson?” Her lips quirked curiously. “He said to pass on his best, and that he’s sorry he wasn’t around for the action.” Tim coughed. “Sounded like you two know each other?”

 

“Oh,” Raylan murmured, looking back down at his file and turning a page over, “we go back.”

 

Art returned from the doorway and perched on the edge of the table, staring wryly down at his most troublesome marshal. “To _when_?”

 

“College.”

 

Everyone looked appropriately satisfied with that answer. Just as Art reached the doorway again, Raylan added quietly without once looking up, “We’d get really drunk, make out in a dark corner of whatever bar, drink some more, and then go home and fall into bed. Probably where he got the idea for _his_ bar, now that I think on it.”

 

A beat passed. Art, looking unsure whether to think Raylan was anything other than completely full of shit, offered, “Well, I guess he shoulda named it after you, then.” And he finally escaped the room, shaking his head wearily.

 

In his wake he left Tim, staring unimpressed, and Rachel with a sort of devious gleam in her eye. “You are so full of shit,” she echoed Art’s expression and retreated in much the same manner.

 

X---X

 

_The Week Prior_

 

The next month passed in blur of usual marshal business bullshit, made _un_ usual only in that never once did that bullshit call them down to Harlan. The dust was still settling from the Drew Thompson fiasco, Boyd Crowder was licking his wounds, what with Ava put away, and any small loose ends had been tied up while Raylan was suspended, so as to minimize the risk of bullets flying in the process (Raylan was torn between resenting the hell out of that explanation or acknowledging its wisdom).

 

Tim seemed to have settled on a strategy of pretending his oddly personal conversations with Raylan had never happened, and after a few weeks of this, Raylan began to wonder if he’d severely overstepped the mark with the PTSD assumptions and Tim had simply been caught in a hellish crosscurrent of emotional stress after the events with Mark and Colton Rhodes.

 

His gut – and his neck hair – told him otherwise. But even at his most open, Tim had been the master of sarcasm, evasion, and half-answers, and so when Art asked him at one point if things were alright there, Raylan could only shrug and say that his colleague was back to normal, though who could say if _normal_ and _alright_ were synonymous?

 

The night some dumb shit decided to rob a Lexington bank at 4:30 in the afternoon (got stuck in rush hour traffic, ran into a Dairy Queen and took three customers and two employees hostage in a three hour standoff, and only ended because he finally realized that he’d left the money in the car and what was the point?) found Art, Tim, Rachel, and Raylan sitting in Art’s office afterwards drinking from his good stash.

 

“Always good to end an op without any casualties,” Art raised his glass in a cheer for his deputy underlings.

 

Tim studied his glass a minute while everyone else took a sip. “I do appreciate the lack of paperwork,” he mulled. “But that asshole was so dumb, putting him out of his misery would have been an act of mercy.” A beat passed while he downed the bourbon. “Plus, it was really goddamn cold up there.”

 

Art grinned. “There’s a joke here to be made about the three customers caught up in the situation because they were eating _ice cream_ on a thirty-five degree November evening.”

 

“But probably a better joke to be made about Raylan bumming _three_ free cones from the manager in the time it took us to wrap up the mess,” Rachel added wryly.

 

Raylan shrugged, shameless. “Now aren’t you glad he didn’t pick a bar?”

 

 

They broke up the festivities a few minutes later to make some effort to salvage what was left of the night at home, less than ten hours before they’d have to be back in the office. Raylan grabbed his keys and his hat from his desk. His tac vest lay flung across the chair, and after a step towards the door he sighed, Winona’s years of bitching inexplicably flashing through his head. He backtracked, seized the wayward garment, and detoured to the locker room, shooting Art a casual mock-salute through the fishbowl windows of his office.

 

The locker room was dark, lit only by the thin row of emergency lights and the eerie red glow of the exit signs. A rustling of fabric and the creak of old locker hinges were the only immediate evidence of the room’s other occupant, and Raylan stuck his head cautiously around the corner. “Tim?” The younger marshal glanced over his shoulder as he nimbly undid the row of buttons on his shirt. “Mood lighting?” He flipped the light switch and strolled over to his own space, tossing the vest haphazardly inside.

 

By contrast, Tim’s locker was tediously organized, his rifle bag slotting neatly in to the last open space. He was pulling a long-sleeve Henley over his head when Raylan again drawled quietly, “Tim?”

 

“ _What_ , Raylan?”

 

“Bit more than a well-deserved slap, hm?”

 

He stilled with a guilty absoluteness, and then wrestled the garment down across his undershirt, across bruised arms and shoulders with speed born of defensiveness. “I know I wouldn’t be the first person in this office to get my ass kicked on my time off.”

 

“Now, if you’d told me you tripped and fell down the stairs, I mighta believed you.”

 

Tim slammed his locker and whirled, leaning against the cold metal and crossing his arms over his chest. “You know what? Fuck you, Raylan. All the shenanigans _you_ get into off the clock and I never give you shit about it.”

 

“Dude, you give me shit all the time.”

 

“Did you just say _dude_?”

 

“Did you just says _shenanigans_?” Tim’s jaw twitched, a look of unbridled fury wrecking his usual stoic demeanor, and it occurred to Raylan that somewhere along the way, someone had failed Tim, utterly. Maybe himself. Maybe all of them.

 

And when it came time to admit his own defeat, there was one person Raylan knew to turn to, who would do his level best to help him out of whatever hole he’d dug for himself, once he was through yelling at him. “I’m sorry, Tim; but I think it’s time I talked to Art.”

 

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

 

Raylan shot him a look equal parts sympathy and skepticism. “You’re seriously going to tell me you got in a fight that left that little bit of bruising I could see there,” he gestured vaguely, “and I’ll bet you plenty more I _can’t_ see – and not once did they touch your face? You tell your… _friend_ … to back off after you drew my attention a few weeks back?”

 

“Rules of Fight Club, and all.” Raylan frowned, unimpressed. “I’m seriously going to tell you it’s none of your goddamn business.”

 

He bit back an exasperated curse. “Am I not allowed to just… _care_?”

 

“I have no use for it.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Gutterson, and I thought _I_ was the emotional cripple in this office. Do you enjoy it, or is that just the only way you can feel anything at all anym-?”

 

The fist swung around so suddenly that Raylan had no chance to dodge or block it. He was crashing into the row of lockers behind him with a tremendous clanging noise and then sliding to the floor in total shock before he even registered the pain in his jaw.

 

“Goddamn,” he muttered, dragging himself into a relatively seated position and gingerly touching a bleeding lip. “Now _that_ is how you land a punch.”

 

Tim had a hand covering his eyes; he was flexing the other, knuckles undoubtedly stinging. “Raylan-”

 

The door flew open, bouncing against the opposite wall with a bang. “As if today weren’t long enough!” Art glowered over the scene before him, looking taken aback for only an instant that it was not Raylan’s temper that had set things off. “Goddamn! My office – _now_.”

 

They trooped after him like errant schoolboys. Rachel was waiting just outside the women’s locker space, but Art waved her on and shot her a look when she hesitated. He pointed Raylan and Tim into the office, and then slipped into the coffee nook and reappeared with two packs of blue ice from the freezer.

 

He tossed one to Raylan and barked, “Face.” The other flew to Tim. “Hand.” He paused. “At least you had the good sense not to punch with your trigger hand.” Tim shrugged dully. “Now someone tell me what in the _hell_ is going on with you two and, I swear to God, if the punchline of your little story is that you’re sleeping together, I am liable to put a bullet in at least one of you.”

 

Raylan blinked, then grinned. “Aw, Art, and I didn’t think you believed me about Greg Moreson.”

 

“Well goddamn, Raylan, you’ve slept with everyone else, I guess nothing would surprise me at this point.”

 

“It was something of a phase.”

 

“Excellent, then you _aren’t_ sowing office discord with your dick. What the fuck is the problem?”

 

Tim leaned over to Raylan and pitched a loud whisper. “Uh-oh. Daddy’s mad.”

 

“God _dammit_ , Tim!” Tim had that sort of manic grin though, and Raylan knew the mask was back, that sparring, be it verbal, physical, or mental, was his own sort of antidrug. Art reluctantly shifted his expectant gaze to his usual problem child. “Raylan?” He pursed his lips and grimaced. “Okay, fine. Shit. Here’s what we’re going to do.” He jabbed a finger at Tim. “You’re on desk duty until further notice.”

 

That drew an honest reaction out of the young marshal. He straightened in outrage. “What? That’s bullshit, Chief.”

 

“Is it?” Art countered. “When’s the last time you handled a firearm in an op before tonight?” Tim sat back, surprised. “Colton Rhodes, was it? And do you remember that conversation we had with him in the car not long before then, the conversation _you and I_ had in the car?”

 

“I didn’t punch Raylan because I spent three hours staring out of my rifle scope tonight.”

 

Art threw his hands up. “I’m still waiting to hear why you _did_ punch him, then! Lord knows I have the inclination on a regular basis, but have thus far demonstrated what I consider to be remarkable restraint.”

 

“I’m lost,” Raylan interjected, leaning in to the glaring standoff between the other two men. “Conversation?”

 

Tim drawled, eyes never leaving Art’s, “Chief thinks I punched you because I told him two months ago in the middle of an IED ambush that I might just be having PTSD-driven paranoia.” Raylan blinked between the two curiously.

 

“You also told me-” Art started to protest.

 

“Okay, that part was a joke.”

 

“Oh,” he snarled, “really fucking funny.”

 

“Still lost,” Raylan put in quietly, leaning back in his seat.

 

Art fumed for a moment, and then rubbed his head tiredly, ignoring Raylan completely. “You aren’t working out of this office until I get a glowing report about your mental health.”

 

“Should I get it from our usual contracted shrink?” Tim asked sardonically. “Think I’ve got her on speed-dial from all the mandatory post-shooting talks we’ve had.”

 

“No,” Art stated adamantly. “Christ, like we all don’t know exactly what we’re supposed to say to her. No,” he repeated, “I’m putting a call in at the VA tomorrow, they’re the experts.”

 

Tim was shaking his head slowly back and forth though. “Can’t go to the VA for that.”

 

“Why the hell not?”

 

“Army never diagnosed me.”

 

“You’d hardly be the first vet to get a diagnosis a few years after the fact.”

 

But Tim had turned his attention to Raylan. The older marshal was sitting quietly, head propped in one hand, observing the back and forth, frowning. “What do you think, Raylan?” Dark brows rose, an accompanying expression suggesting he’d rather be anywhere else at this point. “You’re the one who keeps trying to go down this particular rabbit hole. Why a badass sniper, Army Ranger, can’t go to the experts on combat trauma to discuss all of the traumatic combat he’s seen, for eight-hundred, Alex.”

 

Raylan let out a weary breath and glanced once between a stern but confused Art, and Tim looking just surrendered. He wasn’t sure an answer was really expected, but then Tim raised his brows impatiently, and he sighed. “Because trauma from combat was never the problem.”

 

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner.”

 

Art frowned. “But then -”

 

“M. S. T,” Tim enunciated each letter sharply. “Military sexual trauma. It’s a nice, statistically-friendly way of saying being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by four or five guys, gagged, beaten, and raped, and then left bleeding on the floor until your bunkmate spotter wandered in, drunk off his ass.”

 

Raylan closed his eyes and looked down; the room was otherwise still and silent, until Art breathed quietly, “Jesus Christ.”

 

“I don’t think he made an appearance,” Tim quipped.

 

 

 

Art kicked Raylan out after that. Tim followed the cowboy out of the corner of his eye until the door closed, and then offered dully, “It’s not about me not wanting to… _get help_ , or whatever. I mean, I don’t care to sit on a shrink’s couch and talk about my feelings, but.” He shrugged. “VAs are overfilled and they weed out patients however they can. A lot of clinics, Lexington included, won’t touch PTSD stemming from MST without service records proving you experienced MST in the first place. All they need to approve claims of combat stress is to know you deployed to a combat zone.”

 

Art grimaced and nodded. “And let me guess: even if you were inclined to report the attack, the likely outcome at that time was a less-than-honorable discharge that might jeopardize your future career options.”

 

“They were smart,” Tim shrugged. “They knew how not to leave evidence. At best, I could pinpoint two of ‘em from a broken nose and a black eye, but that’s hardly conclusive for a CID investigation. Other factors notwithstanding.”

 

“I’m sorry, Tim.” Tim cracked a sort of wry smile and looked away. “You do understand though that I see no way forward, no way that enables you to fully perform your job, without getting you cleared?” He shrugged noncommittally, still looking off to the side. “You’ve been out of sorts since the mess with Rhodes. I’m not going to ask why – or what any of it has to do with decking Raylan tonight – but I am going to make some quiet calls in the morning and find someone for you to see.”

 

“Fine.” A minute of silence passed before Tim took it as an offer of dismissal, and he climbed slowly to his feet. “See you at eight, Chief.”

 

Art hesitated. “If you want to take tomorr-”

 

“I’ll see you at eight.”

 

“Okay then. G’night, son.”

 

X---X

 

That Raylan was leaning against the hood of his car waiting for him ought not have surprised Tim, and all he could do was sigh tiredly, torn between telling him to fuck off yet again or just accept that Raylan was apparently incapable of dropping this. He hesitated a moment, toying with the idea of ignoring the cowboy altogether and just driving away, but instead crossed slowly around and leaned against Raylan’s car as well, mimicking his posture and staring straight ahead, speaking into the empty night.

 

“I ain’t gonna be your damsel in distress.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Stop projecting your own issues and insecurities onto me. I know Arlo was a real son of a bitch, and I know you and your mother suffered for it. But I don’t have to justify my sex life, to you of all people.”

 

Raylan shot him a sideways look at that, but accepted the jab at his own personal bullshit. “That’s fair,” he looked down, scuffed some loose gravel with the toe of his boot. “I was out of line in there. I apologize.”

 

Tim just sighed and shrugged. “I’d have probably done the same.” He swung around the hood of the car and opened the passenger door, ducking in nimbly before Raylan even registered that the conversation was apparently over. “Where are we headed?”

 

Raylan’s lips quirked as he lowered himself into the driver seat. “Sorry?”

 

“Well, I ain’t sleeping tonight, and ten bucks says that you were planning to follow me to make sure I went home, and then would have fought the urge to check up on my whereabouts and doings for half the night anyway, so let’s just cut out the middle man.”

 

An appropriately guilty look flashed through Raylan’s eyes, but he shrugged it off easily enough. “Okay, then. Dinner?” Tim just shook his head. “Movie?”

 

He perked up and checked his watch. “Oh man, that old indie place down the street is showing the new Avengers movie this week. Guess they ran out of artsy bullshit. Last show’s probably still in previews.”

 

“The new who movie?”

 

“Oh, Jesus fuck, Raylan, keep up.”

 

X---X


	4. Part 4

**Part 4**

_Present_

Tim didn’t come back to work after his Thursday appointment. When lunchtime came and went and he still hadn’t returned, Raylan stuck his head into Art’s office, who preempted his question without even looking up from his computer. “He called and asked for the rest of the day off. With something like three months of unused vacation time backed up, it only seemed sporting to give it to him.”

 

Raylan waited for Art to finally look his way to open his mouth, but Art cut him off at the jump. “Leave it alone, Raylan,” he ordered firmly. “Tim ain’t your puzzle to solve, and the last time you stuck your nose in, he about punched it clean off.”

 

“He didn’t get anywhere near my nose. Didn’t even bloody it.”

 

“ _Raylan_.” Art stared at him overtop his glasses. “He wants your help, God save him, he’ll ask for it.”

 

Raylan was about ninety-five percent sure that, _no_ , Tim would never do any such thing no matter how much it might be needed, but he nevertheless quashed the urge to request a location on Tim’s car yet again and got grumpily back to work on his latest parole violator.

 

All presumptions were proven wrong when a lazy knock drew him to the door in his boxers and undershirt at quarter to eleven that night and he discovered that, if nothing else, Tim wanted help getting drunk.

 

“You gonna shoot me or invite me in?” Raylan’s eyes swept the porch and the parking lot one last time before he slid his gun onto the table by the door with a _thunk_. “Thanks. I brought bourbon.”

 

“I have beer.”

 

“Grrr-eat.” He settled himself in the chair under the window. “Which order are we supposed to drink those in?”

 

Raylan shot him a look as he disappeared into the bathroom to find his discarded jeans. “Sounds like you’ve got a head-start, in any case. You drive here?”

 

“I can walk a line straight as fuck, thank you.”

 

That didn’t exactly answer the question, but he didn’t press. On his way to the table, he stopped and snagged two beers out of the mini-fridge, two plastic cups from atop it, and a candy bar he’d grabbed from the lobby vending machine some days earlier. He tossed Tim the candy and chucked the gun onto the bed instead. “Here. When’d you last eat?”

 

“Dinner.”

 

“What’d you have for dinner?”

 

“Bourbon.”

 

Raylan passed Tim a beer, but secreted the cups and the bottle of Jim Beam out of sight under his chair at the first chance he could at least pretend Tim wasn’t looking. The concept of being the responsible one baffled him for a moment, but he opted not to linger. He cast about for a conversation topic, but couldn’t seem to find one that wasn’t related to Tim’s reduced workload that had to be mind-numbingly tedious at this point, if not humiliating, or Tim’s no-show after his trip to the therapist that morning.

 

Tim spared him the effort after a moment of silence threatened to grow uncomfortable. He gestured with his bottle across the table and looked Raylan over. “You know why I think you are the way you are?”

 

“How am I?”

 

“You know.”

 

“Emotionally exhausted and morally bankrupt?”

 

A grin threatened the sanctity of Tim’s heavy scowl, but the scowl eventually won. “All… thunder and fury and completely fucking remorseless about how you get the job done, so long as the job gets done.”

 

“Oh, so I was right.”

 

“Dammit, Raylan, be serious.”

 

“Oh, is that what we’re doing here?” A frown pulled gently at the corners of his mouth as he studied the younger marshal, but he chose to humor him. “Why am I like that, Tim?”

 

With an air of one imparting great wisdom, Tim nodded sagely and said, “Your momma.” Raylan looked on, nonplussed. “We didn’t have such different upbringings. Well.” He paused. “Arlo was an asshole _and_ a criminal, my father was just an asshole. I think. Anyway. I don’t remember my mother. Sometimes, I think I do, but then I think maybe I’m just trying to impose her picture on my earliest memories.”

 

Raylan sighed. “Tim, if you’re going to tell me I was motivated to become a marshal because my abusive father was a wife-beating piece of shit, you wouldn’t be the first.”

 

“Ah, did Boyd Crowder beat me to that particular punchline?”

 

“He did.” There was a manic sort of gleam behind Tim’s drawn eyes that Raylan didn’t like. “Boyd’s one redeeming quality, that he apparently did _not_ inherit from Bo, is his disinclination to hit women, or you know Ava’d put him in the ground like she did his brother.” He paused a moment. “Would have, I guess.”

 

“She does like to plug people with that shotgun o’hers, doesn’t she?” Raylan chose not to comment further. “I hated my father but I wasn’t so goddamn angry about it.”

 

Raylan sucked his teeth a moment, summoning patience for his drunken colleague. “Okay, Tim. I think maybe it’s time to -”

 

“Because,” Tim leaned forward earnestly, “I think that’d be very upsetting. Seeing the bruises on someone else, and not being able to do anything about it. Even if you can tell yourself that yours ain’t all that bad.”

 

“It was, at that,” Raylan acknowledged quietly.

 

Tim took a long pull to finish off his bottle. “And my mother was dead,” he repeated. “So I didn’t grow up with that.”

 

“I followed your logic.” And then, because he was feeling spiteful after Tim dragged up such unhappy shit, he did exactly what he’d promised himself not to do. “So you think I wouldn’t blink twice if it looked like someone was roughing you up, were it not for the fact that I apparently abhor the sight of bruises on account of my childhood?”

 

Tim leaned back in his chair, now empty-handed – Raylan had made no move to procure another drink for either of them – and smiled a coy sort of grin that set Raylan on edge. “You know there’s like, a whole community of folks who get off on that shit.”

 

“And if I thought there was a chance in hell you were one of ‘em, I wouldn’t a’ said anything.”

 

“What the _fuck_ do you know about it?” Tim flew to his feet, suddenly angry, eyes burning. “About _any_ of it?”

 

“Only what you’ve told me; what little bit I know about your past; from all of which I can guess that someone as _compartmentalized_ as yourself probably hasn’t been going out for rough hookups at gay bars and bondage night at the club for very long.”

 

“Oh, do they have a bondage night at the club?” Raylan just stared dully up at him. “So, you’ve figured it out then.”

 

He cocked his head, confused. “Figured what out?”

 

“That you had it backwards in your interview with Sawyer. I didn’t ‘earn his attentions,’ _he earned_ _mine_.”

 

Raylan stared open-mouthed for several long seconds. “Sit down,” he ordered, ire rising precipitously. Tim didn’t move, just leaned across the table, breathing heavily, remarkably sobered since heated words had begun to be exchanged.

 

And it occurred to Raylan that he had been played. To what end, he wasn’t entirely sure. “Did you know who he was?” he asked, voice deadly quiet.

 

“Jesus,” Tim laughed, “no. I’m not a complete idiot.”

 

“But he looked like a mean son of a bitch, so you thought you’d see if he was amenable to getting off on fighting you for it.”

 

“Remember when we agreed I _don’t_ have to justify my sex life to you?”

 

“Was Mark a mean son of a bitch?”

 

He regretted the words the instant they flew out of his mouth; regretted them even more when Tim withdrew, all anger and confrontation leaving his eyes, and for just a second, a telling, heart-wrenching second, he looked completely wrecked.

 

Then the mask was back, and he slid around his chair with a fair amount of grace, given his condition, and picked up his discarded jacket, slung it over his arm. “I should go.”

 

“You’re drunk.”

 

“I’ll call a cab.” He reached for the doorknob as Raylan seized his wrist, and he whirled angrily and thumped a fist back against the door, hard. “ _What_?”

 

He ran an anxious hand through his hair. “I… Christ, I’m sorry.”

 

“Didn’t I tell you to stop saying that?”

 

“Okay…” Tim tried again for the door; Raylan knew he was pushing his luck, but he pressed his hand against it to prevent it from opening and waited for Tim to turn back again with an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know if you feel… guilty… about Mark, or… shit, I don’t know…” Tim’s brow furrowed. “I’m just trying to say that it doesn’t need to be like this.”

 

“Like what, Raylan?”

 

Raylan held his gaze but slowly reached a hand up to the collar of Tim’s shirt. He pulled the red flannel aside far as he could to where a line of yellowing bruises were slow to fade away, bruises that wrapped around his upper arm and shoulder, and disappeared under the sleeveless hem of his white undershirt. Raylan matched his fingers up to the pattern of marks made by a hand slightly smaller than his, and felt the barest tremble from the younger man.

 

“Like this,” he murmured, withdrawing his hand and reaching instead for the shirt hem, pulling it up to expose a few inches of skin, his stomach, waist, hips. Similar finger marks wrapped around, disappearing beneath the waist of his jeans, a few blunter but darker bruises that he thought might be made by fists. “And this.” Releasing the hem of his shirt, he carefully pulled a clenched hand into his own and drew the sleeve up halfway to Tim’s elbow. “And this.” Wrapping a hand gently around a thin wrist, he turned the arm over and studied skin that was more recently discolored, but not new, and found relief only in the lack of evidence that the troubled young man before him had been foolhardy enough to allow himself to be otherwise restrained.

 

He let go of Tim’s arm took a step back, freeing up the door, not discounting the possibility that once the desperation cleared from his eyes, he might take another swing. For a long minute though, they just stood face-to-face, Raylan wondering just how far fucked he was when Tim sobered up, and if Art learned how spectacularly he’d ignored the order to let things be, before his thoughts ground to a halt.

 

“Show me, then.”

 

Raylan blinked owlishly a few times. “Do what, now?”

 

Tim took a small step in from the door, eyes wild in trepidation, maybe a tinge of fear even. “Show me how it can be.” His voice dropped, almost inaudible. “Because I can barely remember anymore.”

 

“I don’t-”

 

A hot mouth pressed against his, tasting of beer and bourbon and chocolate - when had he eaten the candy bar? – and Raylan found a low sound building deep in his throat and emerging somewhere between a groan and a growl as he slid his hands up Tim’s arms and gently pushed him back by the shoulders. “Tim.”

 

“Sorry. _Christ_. I’m sorry.” He backed up against the door and ran a hand over his flushed face. “Something of a phase.”

 

“It’s not that.”

 

“Oh,” he scoffed, “sorry I’m not Boyd goddamned Crowder, then.”

 

“It ain’t that, either.” Raylan found himself suddenly wishing he’d had a snort of the bourbon after all. “If I thought you were all here right now…”

 

He didn’t finish the thought, couldn’t, because they both knew damn well that if Tim were _all here_ , he’d sure as hell never be _here_ , in Raylan’s motel room, and the point would be moot, and that regardless of Raylan’s admittedly ambiguous sexual proclivities. Finishing the thought just seemed like it would hover somewhere vaguely between disingenuous and patronizing.

 

The hurt and desperation in Tim’s eyes faded away into something like surrender, before he pressed them shut and rubbed harshly at them with the heels of his palms. “I should go,” he reiterated quietly. “I’ll get a cab.”

 

“I have to be honest, Tim, I’m not wild on the idea of you being alone right now.”

 

“I’ll have the cab driver.”

 

He bit back a sigh. “At least let me drive you home.”

 

 

It was late and fucking freezing, and Tim lived halfway across Lexington, but the burst of winter night air at least helped snap Raylan out of the surrealism of his night and he started contemplating which convenience store or 24-hour grocery on his route back would have the best ice cream. He briefly considered asking Tim’s advice, if only to get a rise out of him, but a glance over at the passenger seat dissuaded him of that idea. Hands tucked into his jacket, chin burrowed down far is it would go, Tim looked small and lost, staring blankly out the window without seeming to register any of his surroundings.

 

Raylan reached over and turned the radio on softly, just for something to do besides pose the ever-useless _are you okay?_ A minute later though, a hand shot out and switched it back off, before disappearing back inside the warmth of the jacket.

 

A minute after that, Tim spoke his first words since giving his terse acceptance of the ride. “He wasn’t like that.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Mark. He wasn’t… he was nice. Sweet, gentle. Tentative, in a way that was mostly cute, but made you want to tear your hair out when things got heated. Our first deployments fell in such a way, we didn’t see one another for going on eighteen months. For fuck’s sake, you don’t need to ask my permission to take off my pants.”

 

Raylan laughed softly but quickly sobered. “I’m sorry about what happened to him, truly. And I’m sorry no one at the office knew how important he was to you.”

 

Tim swallowed audibly. “It was Colton Rhodes.”

 

“Ellen May mentioned something to that effect.” He sensed Tim’s hooded eyes turning on him, and he shrugged. “You have a choice in what you did?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, then. No need getting Art spun up over it.”

 

“Any other reports you’ve selectively edited to my benefit?”

 

Raylan smiled lightly. “Not as I recall.”

 

X---X

 

“Are you attracted to Raylan?”

 

Tim’s expression didn’t change, save the lift of a single cool brow. Reggie matched the look and stared him down, until he let out a huff of breath and deflated slightly. “You’d have to know Raylan to understand.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

“Raylan is…” he searched for a moment for the right words to encompass such an individual. “He’s like the sun.” Reggie blinked in surprise, and then her face softened slightly, as though he’d said something really touching. So Tim elaborated, and quickly disavowed her of that notion. “He’s pretty and useful, but you know that if you look too hard or get too close, you’ll get burned; he has to be at the center of whatever world he’s in, and one day, he’s liable to explode and kill us all.”

 

She laughed. “So that’s a no, then.”

 

“If you ever so much as think about breaking confidentiality and telling someone I said he was pretty – remember, I’ve shot men in the head from a length of twenty football fields.”

 

The words had come out before any semblance of a filter kicked in, but she didn’t seem especially fazed by the off-color war humor. He gathered that she’d seen her fair share of veterans and law enforcement for patients.

 

“Why do you think you keep coming back to Raylan on this?” She preempted the objection already forming on his lips. “And don’t say it’s because he asserts himself, you’ve gone to him at least twice that you’ve told me of.” Tim just sat back and stared blankly, not so much avoiding answering as baffled as to what that answer might be. He was Raylan; fun to goad, and a decent confidante, if only because his own bullshit would undoubtedly catch up with him eventually and make him forget Tim’s. “What you told him, about why he is the way he is… is that why?”

 

“I don’t follow you.”

 

“You seem to think Raylan has dark emotions from his past making him reckless… maybe even a little self-destructive?” He rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “You know what set your stress into overdrive, the moment old, vivid, painful memories started pressing in at unpredictable times… I’m guessing as well it’s when you began pursuing sexual encounters of a…forceful nature, if a consensual one,” Tim grimaced. “You told me already.”

 

He ground his teeth and bit out, “Mark’s death.”

 

She tapped her pen idly against the desk. “More specifically than that, his death at the hands of another veteran, no?”

 

“Oh, you don’t think I’d feel like shit if he’d been popped by a run-of-the-mill civilian druggie?”

 

Per usual, his sarcasm went unacknowledged. “I think you’d feel like shit for slightly different reasons.” He stared. “Why did you ask Raylan what he was going to do with the knowledge that you’re gay?”

 

“I don’t need a psychologist to tell me that getting gang-raped by my _comrades-in-arms_ left me highly distrusting of my colleagues, even those _after_ I left the Army, even those who are supposed to have my back and I, theirs.”

 

Green eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and the pen stopped tapping. “You were attacked because you’re gay.”

 

“It happens.”

 

“I know.”

 

“It’s a dominance thing. Supposedly.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“It happens to straight men, too. It’s an epidemic.”

 

“Tim.”

 

“And women. All the fucking time. Jesus Christ, have you seen the statistics on that shit?”

 

“ _Tim_.” He blinked, eyes coming back into focus. “How did they know you were gay?” He froze. “Did you know them?”

 

“No one knew.”

 

She tilted her head curiously. “But did you know them?” He shook his head tersely. “You’re sure? You said they covered their faces, didn’t speak much…”

 

“They weren’t my fucking guys, okay?”

 

“Okay.” She hesitated. “No one knew?” He let out a groan and put his head in his hands. “Mark knew.”

 

“ _Mark wasn’t there_.”

 

“I know that; but where was he?”

 

Tim looked up, spread his hands in confusion. “Germany.”

 

“He’d been injured already.” His head jerked once in confirmation. “Were you there?”

 

“Snipers are usually on the _other_ side of the enemy line.”

 

“That’s a no, then.”

 

“ _Yes_.”

 

Her calm exterior cracked for just an instant and she looked pained. “Please, Tim, bear with me here. I’m not trying to drag out the worst day of your life just for the fun of it.” His jaw worked in frustration, but he kept his tongue in check. “You were away on a… a mission?... when Mark was injured.”

 

He swallowed thickly. “Yes.” Mouth, throat, lips were suddenly dry, and the words emerged as a pained croak. “We, ah… my spotter and I, we spent more than a week freezing our asses off high up a mountain looking for our target, watching him, before I got the go-ahead to pull. We got back and he’d been airlifted out a few hours earlier.”

 

She nodded slowly. “And you were exhausted, worn… probably relieved to be back to the security of your base.” He remained silent, but did not contradict her. “Even worried about Mark, you went straight to bed soon as you were able, probably dropped straight off into a dead sleep.” Brows rose, somewhat nonplussed. “And while your guard was down… while your bunkmate was getting drunk somewhere else… you were attacked. It was planned – they knew your guard would be at its lowest, knew your bunkmate was gone… they covered their faces, wore gloves, wore condoms. It was not an opportunistic attack; it was retribution. Because you were a Ranger which, by definition, made you among the best of the best. And you were serving in an institution that wouldn’t let you acknowledge your sexuality, like it somehow made you something _less_.”

 

Blood was pounding in his ears, his vision tunneled and he put his head back down in his hands, thinking back inexplicably to Basic, to two foolhardy eighteen-year-olds willing to risk a career that hadn’t even started by stealing the occasional kiss when they were the last out of their barracks and, when they got more bold, the occasional grope when they were last out of the communal shower. Touching each other so carefully, so quietly, after sliding their sleeping bags unnecessarily close together during overnight field training exercises and barely daring to breathe, always on edge and listening for any indication of someone else waking up, of a drill sergeant patrolling through.

 

He pressed his fists into his eyes until the images faded away and he saw stars; when he sat up and withdrew his hands, they were wet. “He didn’t mean to.”

 

“I know.”

 

“He was hurt… scared for his leg, for his life.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Probably delirious with pain or high on morphine. He didn’t mean to. Probably never even knew he’d said anything at all.” He drew in a shuddering breath and felt hot tears scalding his cheeks. “But it’s the only way they could have known.”

 

For a long time, she let him sit and cry, probably guessed easily enough that he had not yet done so on behalf of Mark, or his own regrets, and when a soft chime beeped on her desk, signaling five minutes ‘til the end of their session, he felt completely raw and drained.

 

“Tim?” He wiped at the corners of his eyes but couldn’t bring himself to meet hers. “I want to tell you something, before you leave.” Blinking blearily, he reluctantly shifted his gaze. “It’s alright if you resented Mark for it; even if a part deep down inside you blamed him. Your resentment didn’t kill him.” He pressed his eyes closed to try to stave off a new wave. “He was already started down his troubled path when you, under no obligation, _chose_ to be here near him. And you helped him as best you could, as best you were able while dealing with your own demons.”

 

“I could have been there more,” he found himself protesting softly anyway. “He wanted…”

 

Reggie picked up for him when he failed to finish the thought. “Whether or not he wanted to continue an intimate relationship with you, think about the implications of saying you _should have_ obliged him, regardless of your own desires and never mind your emotional state, and reconsider. Forget about the what-ifs. They do nothing but torture us to no end but our own suffering.”

 

X---X

 

Raylan started when a shadow fell across him and a Starbucks cup dropped down on his desk; it teetered a moment, unbalanced on a haphazard stack of files, and he seized it and moved it to a safer, flatter spot before too much of the liquid could escape the mouth hole and stain the property of the U.S. Marshals Service.

 

A quick glance up showed Tim to be the unrepentant deliverer of expensive coffee. “This is why they make those little green stirry stick pluggy things.”

 

“Aw, shit, you know I asked about little green stirry stick pluggy things and they said they were out.”

 

“Bastards.”

 

Raylan nodded his appreciation and looked back at the report he’d spent a tedious morning compiling, but the shadow didn’t shift, and a mumbled, “Thanks,” drew his eyes back up.

 

“Hm?” he murmured distractedly.

 

“Thank you.”

 

The earnest sincerity in place of Tim’s usual dry tone gave him pause, but he smiled easily. “Ain’t that my line?” He nodded to the coffee cup.

 

“Raylan. I think you know what I mean.”

 

He studied Tim’s bright eyes a moment, and then nodded. “Well, okay then.”

 

Tim inclined his head jerkily and ducked away to his own cubicle. He spent a few minutes starting his computer, digging some files out of his desk, but when he straightened and set to work, Raylan could hear him mumble under his breath.

 

“I mean, shit, the hangover was bad enough; the self-recrimination would have fucking killed me.”

 X---X


	5. Part 5

**Part 5**

 

“So I’m like, cured now, right?” Reggie looked up as Tim dropped himself heavily into his usual chair. “’S’how it goes on TV… there’s like, this great moment of revelation, and then the fucking tears, and then you’re all better.”

 

“Do you feel all better?”

 

The movement wasn’t enough to qualify as a _flinch_ , exactly. He answered after a slow three beats. “No.” He ran a hand across his face, rubbed at sleepless eyes. “No, I feel… _angry_. Which I figure is a step up from feeling guilty, except I still feel some of that, too, so.”

 

Her head tilted curiously. “Do you still feel guilty about Mark?”

 

The pause before he answered stretched on just a bit too long, but he knew he sounded confident in his, “No.” But then he reconsidered. “Well- not in the way you think. The man who killed him, Colton Rhodes…” he shrugged in defeat. “I knew he was a piece of shit. The simple fact of his employer told me that he wasn’t a good guy, and it’s nothing more than what-ifs but…”

 

“But _what if_ you’d found something to arrest him for, or _what if_ you’d put the fear of God into him and made him think twice about killing _your_ friend?”

 

“Instead of telling him about how great the Marshals Service is for vets,” Tim added bitterly, looking away.

 

She nodded slowly, did not further address the futility of hypotheticals, but she did consider him a moment with a keenness in her gaze that put him on edge. “Colton Rhodes was more to you than the man who murdered Mark. He was representative of all the ways the Army failed you, betrayed you.” He drew in a slow breath that did little to calm him. “And then you found yourself literally fighting for your life when he ambushed you on a back country highway and it was too much, too much like a time three years earlier when you probably felt much the same betrayal and fear.”

 

He scoffed softly under his breath. “They’d never have killed me; had to know that was the only way they might get caught.”

 

It was quiet for a moment while she tried to catch his eye; he pretended not to notice. “Can you honestly tell me that, at no point that night, you thought were going to die?”

 

A spot on the far wall was suddenly fascinating as memories and sensations threatened to assault him while he forcibly pushed back. But the one tendril of his nightmares that had proved constant through the years belied the denial on his lips, the press of the cold blade of an Army-issue folding knife under his ear after he’d proven too unmanageable, had freed an arm and busted the nose of one of his attackers as they tried to restrain him, and even as he made the conscious decision to fling his head backwards – caught that one in the eye – he’d thought him fully capable of dragging that knife across his throat.

 

That one – Tim supposed him to be the ringleader, later identified him from the black eye as a chronic fuck-up in Mark’s platoon – had been cruel but not stupid. A whack to the back of the head and a punch to the kidney gave him the time he needed to get Tim’s arms secured behind his back and the knife had disappeared, his bluff called.

 

“Sure,” he let out a heavy sigh. “The thought occurred.”

 

“Do you ever regret that you didn’t report what happened?”

 

He shrugged half-heartedly. “No. I don’t harbor any what-ifs on that account, I knew how the system worked. How it probably still works, minus the part where they’d have kicked me out when the CID investigation kicked off the _Sergeant Gutterson is gay_ rumor mill.”

 

Finally turning his eyes back to her though, he added, “But sometimes? Sometimes, when I see the reports about the fucking despicable rate of sexual assault in the military, and the service academies, and the anonymous surveys suggesting the _actual_ rate is _so much fucking higher_ , I wonder about those… shit, I don’t even know how many were involved. Five at the start, I think, to get me under control, but I’m pretty sure only four- _only four,_ ” he scoffed, “decided to get more _intimately acquainted_ – would you prefer scientific terms, like _fucked me up the ass_?” For the first time since he’d begun seeing her, save her brief bit of disconcertion at his display of visual recall of the picture of her children, did Reggie look slightly uncomfortable, but he was on roll, and he found himself on his feet and pacing angrily about the small space trying to work out the nervous energy filling him, overwhelming him. “Maybe one was designated look-out. Pretty sure at least one more must have been watching my spotter – my bunkmate – to make sure he stayed where he was until they’d all had their go. Four, five, six, however many, I could only ever pinpoint two of them with any certainty, but I’ll tell you what: when I see those articles _every fucking year_ , I wonder if any of them are still at it, know that statistically speaking yes, they probably are, and I wish to all hell that I’d had the balls to walk up to them in the d-fac and put a goddamn bullet between their eyes.”

 

Reggie stood slowly. “Tim?”

 

He let out a wordless, agonized scream and put a fist through her office wall.

 

X---X

 

Thursday lunchtime was not a particularly busy time at the emergency entrance at UK hospital. Reggie wound her way around a few lingering family members and staff darting about, and made her way to the nurses’ station at the far end of the hall. “Excuse me – a patient of mine was dropped off almost two hours ago, named -”

 

A smooth voice cut in. “I got it, darlin’.” She looked up in surprise over her left shoulder where a tall man was _tipping a goddamn cowboy hat_ in the direction of the nurse, a charming smile making the young redhead blush instantly, and she knew who he was even before noticing the badge he flashed with the other hand. He waited until she’d fallen into step beside him, turning deeper into the maze of hallways of the emergency wing, and then thought to confirm who she was. “Regina Verenes?”

 

“How’d you know?”

 

“You’ve got the same look on your face my boss did when I had to explain to him that no, _Tim hit a wall during therapy_ was not a euphemism.” He paused. “Also, Tim told me to keep an eye out, but I think he was just trying to get me out of the room so he could flirt with the x-ray tech sans commentary. I imagine the x-ray tech would probably be a bit put off by the whole punching a wall incident, but maybe he’s in to that sort of thing.”

 

Reggie just shot him a nonplussed look that went unseen, but Raylan’s step faltered as he considered his own words, and then he came to a sudden stop and passed a hand over a weary face. “Jesus. Let’s try that again. Nice to meet you, ma’am, I’m -”

 

“Raylan Givens,” she supplied. “I like your hat.”

 

His grin was back, subtler this time. “I heard you’ve been talking about me.”

 

“Hm. If that’s what you heard.”

 

His eyes crinkled and he turned and led the rest of the way to a small room around the next turn where Tim was sitting on the bed, legs swinging idly and making him look like a little kid. His left hand was in a splint immobilizing his pinky and ring fingers; there was no x-ray tech to be seen.

 

“Look at that,” Raylan studied the handiwork. “Classic boxer’s fracture. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to hit, son?”

 

“Yeah, but I weakened the bones on your thick skull; how’s your face?”

 

“Long healed, and still glad you hit with your non-dominant hand,” Raylan returned, a shade of seriousness tinging the banter. He pulled out a phone he wasn’t supposed to have on and checked a text, then backed towards the door. “I’ll, ah- leave you two to it. Think Art was going to swing through and yell at you a bit before the meds kick in too strong.”

 

He sauntered off, fixing his hat on the way out. Tim and Reggie both watched him leave, and then she turned and grinned at her patient. “He’s a caricature, isn’t he?”

 

“Thought you’d enjoy finally meeting him.”

 

“You call him to drive you home?”

 

Tim scowled. “No. I called him so he could tell Art why I wouldn’t be back at work this afternoon, and _he’d_ get to listen to him yell instead. Not sure if showing up was so he could escape Art’s yelling, or because Art told him to keep an eye on me and my _other_ hand.” He glanced down a bit mournfully at the splint. “Not that it much matters right now.”

 

She watched his brief melancholy for his hand and his reduced workload wash over him, but then he quickly brightened again. “You know, though? I actually feel pretty good right now.”

 

“That’s the Vicodin, Tim.”

 

“No, not… I mean, yes, probably, but that’s not entirely it. I just feel… lighter. Relieved. It wasn’t that great revelation moment but just… getting it out there, you know?”

 

_Still the Vicodin_. She kept that thought to herself though, pressed her lips together a moment, considering, and then nodded slowly. “I… understand what you mean,” she allowed hesitantly. “I’m a bit concerned at how you got there, though.” His face fell comically, and she wondered just how much they’d given him. “Tim, I just came to check in, I’m not trying to finish out our hour or anything. We’ll talk on Tuesday, alright?”

 

Tim nodded a vague assent, and she could already hear Raylan’s low tones returning down the hall, a slightly raised second voice accompanying. The top of Raylan’s hat appeared around the corner of the doorway, scoping out the situation, before the rest of him appeared, an older, balding man in tow.

 

“Well, hell, Tim.”

 

Tim blinked up slowly at his boss. “S’just a sprain. And look,” he wiggled his other three fingers, “they work just fine.”

 

Reggie saw the chief’s mouth thin into a tight line, and she stepped in front of him and stuck her hand out. “Chief Mullen?”

 

“Ah,” he looked her over briefly. “Ms. Verenes?”

 

“Reggie, please.” She nodded over his shoulder, towards the hallway. “A word?”

 

“Yeah, that’d be good. Is he discharged?” he asked Raylan as he turned. Tim was still wiggling his fingers demonstratively.

 

“Uh, I think they were bringing a ‘script ‘round.”

 

Art led her down the hall of emergency exam rooms ‘til he found an empty one far enough away from Tim’s so as not to be overheard by a spaced-out Tim or more coherent Raylan, then turned on Reggie, frowning. “Should I be concerned?”

 

Her mouth opened and closed twice, and then she cocked her head, confused. “Well, I think you were already concerned when you decided to put a call in to me.” His mouth was compressing again, and she added, “Honestly, I was going to tell you that I expect he’ll be fine to return to work as normal by the time his hand allows it, but judging by the look on your face, you’re unconvinced.”

 

“Well, to put it simply, ma’am,” she didn’t bother to correct him that time, “I called you because he tried to break Raylan’s face, and here we are several weeks later because he found something even _harder_ to punch, so I have to wonder if maybe this isn’t quite working for him.”

 

During the silence that stretched on between them, she found herself wondering, not for the first time, about the dynamic between the men of the Marshals office. More so Tim and Raylan, but she’d had the sense over the phone that their boss’s concern stemmed from more than just liability and covering his own ass, and she took his current attitude bordering on confrontational to be more of that same protectiveness shining through.

 

She tried to bear that in mind even as her own hackles rose. “Chief Mullen – the progress and direction of Tim’s treatment is between him, myself, and any medical professionals he might choose to consult. But I want you to consider,” she shifted her weight forward and stared him in the eye, “the very worst day of your life, the most terrible things you’ve done, seen, experienced; and if those horrors amount to even half of what this young man half your age has been through, I expect finding yourself unable to control those memories, finding yourself unable to remember those horrors without _reliving them_ , would make you want to put your hand through a wall at the _very least_.”

 

He had the grace to look mildly chastened, but the sound of a throat clearing spared him from responding. “Art? I’m going to go ahead and take Tim home.”

 

“Yeah, alright. Give me his car key, I’ll take Rachel over to pick it up later and drop it by.” Raylan withdrew his hat and head from the doorway and disappeared from view. They could hear him bickering a moment with an uncooperative Tim, but Raylan won and he tossed a keychain to his boss. “And Raylan?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Stay with him a bit and try to keep him from washing down his pain meds with bourbon, hm?”

 

Raylan sketched a sardonic salute and disappeared once more.

 

X---X

 

Throughout the whole ordeal, even on those days when desk duty seemed not worth getting up for, even the days when he’d turn around to go to therapy an hour later, Tim had shown up punctually to work. When he wasn’t at his desk at eight on the dot Monday morning, Rachel shot a curious glance across Raylan’s cubicle.

 

When Raylan showed up fifteen minutes late, laden down by good coffee for the office, and the desk to his right was still empty, he looked questioningly at Rachel who shrugged and accepted her coffee distractedly.

 

He rapped twice on the glass window of Art’s office and leaned inside the door. “Where’s Tim?”

 

Art looked up over his glasses out at Tim’s desk and then at Raylan’s furrowed brow. “Not here, it would seem.” He checked the time on his computer screen. “That’s… unusual.”

 

“That’s _unheard of_ ,” Raylan corrected. Art picked up his phone to call.

 

Half an hour and five unanswered calls later (two from Art, one from Raylan, one from Rachel, and a final desperate one which Raylan dialed from Nelson’s phone, just in case), Art finally told Rachel to go check if he was home.

 

“You see him at all this weekend?” Art asked Raylan, still more perplexed than worried. “He didn’t mention… taking some time…?”

 

“I dropped by on Saturday. He told me to make myself fucking useful if I was going to be clingy, so I left and came back with Indian takeaway. He ate his weight in naan.”

 

“I saw him yesterday, early.” Four eyes turned slowly to where Nelson stood at the copier, looking a bit lost as to the commotion, but eager to assist. “I was here on phone duty, he dropped by for maybe twenty, thirty minutes to get some work done.”

 

Raylan swore and crossed over to Tim’s desk to switch on his computer. “Goddammit, Dunlop.”

 

Nelson went back to his desk, shoulders hunched, unsure what offense he had caused. Rachel called back to say Tim wasn’t answering his door, but his car wasn’t there either so did Art want her to kick in the door or not? Art retreated to his office to see where the tracker put Tim’s car while Raylan more discreetly looked up the number of one Regina Verenes, PhD, and started digging around on Tim’s computer to see what he might have been doing in the office the day prior.

 

“Well,” Art announced a few minutes later, “I found his car.”

 

Raylan murmured without looking up, “Is it at the airport, by any chance?”

 

“Mmhmm. Cincy. Can’t get a spot on his phone so he’s probably in the air, or just ignoring us wherever he’s gone.” Art came around Tim’s desk to watch Raylan work. “Any idea where that might be?”

 

“My computer skills are mostly limited to looking at his browser history,” Raylan confessed. “I see nothing telling.”

 

Another quarter-hour passed before Chris from IT made his way upstairs “to do you assholes’ jobs for you” and Raylan’s phone rang. He glanced at the number, shook his head at Art and the newly-returned Rachel’s questioning looks, and then stepped a few paces away to answer it. “Givens.”

 

“Raylan? The receptionist said you called. Is Tim alright?”

 

“Yeah, we can’t find him.”

 

There was a short pause. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Didn’t show up to work today. His car’s at the airport. He say anything about going to… I don’t know, Tahiti, Costa Rica…”

 

“Lawton, Oklahoma,” Chris called over to him. Raylan turned in surprise. “Itinerary has him Cincy to Dallas to Lawton. Flight left at six this morning. Connecting flight scheduled to take off in ten minutes.”

 

He heard a tinny voice and remembered the phone he’d lowered down by his shoulder. “Sorry. Hold on.” He crossed over to Art’s office, his boss on his heels, and shut the door. Phone still held against his shirt collar, he murmured, “Do we get him pulled off the flight?”

 

Art stared. “On what grounds? Failure to show up for work?”

 

Raylan shrugged and put the phone on speaker, set it on the desk. “Reggie?”

 

“Still here. Raylan, that’s where Tim did his Basic.”

 

He blinked down in surprise. “Fort Sill?”

 

“You know it?”

 

“Spent a couple years in the Wichita Falls office an hour down the road. Once chased a fugitive to a seedy motel in Lawton right next to this wonderful little Greek place. Best spanakopita I’ve ever had.” Art just looked at him, baffled, and Reggie was silent, until Raylan sat back and said, “Fuck. Mark.”

 

“It’s where they met,” she acknowledged slowly.

 

Art opened his mouth but Rachel tapped on the glass and cut him off. “Chief? Chris says Tim was also digging around in the federal employee database.”

 

Raylan’s brows shot up to his hairline. “So he’s looking for someone?”

 

“Maybe, maybe not.”

 

“Raylan?” Reggie’s voice called urgently up from the desk. “Raylan, take me off speaker, would you?”

 

Art scowled, but Raylan snagged the phone and pressed a button. “Yeah?”

 

She started to talk fast and quiet in his ear, but the shrill ringing of another phone drew Raylan’s attention away and he barked at her to hold on again when Art quickly answered it. “Tim?” At a look from Raylan, he put that phone on speaker instead.

 

“I’m guessing by the eight missed calls from everyone in the office on down to Nelson, it’s too late to tell you that I mixed my Vicodin with alcohol and am sleeping off the hangover?”

“Jesus Christ, where are you?”

 

“On the tarmac in Dallas,” he drawled. “It’s storming like a son of a bitch, we sat on the runway in Cincinnati for like, forty-five minutes. Apparently they decided our pilot was capable enough to land in a goddamn deluge after all.”

 

“You didn’t think to maybe let someone know _then_ that you wouldn’t be in?”

 

Raylan could practically see the faux-indignant look on Tim’s face. “And turn on my cellular device against FAA policy?” He paused, and then muttered, “I also may have forgotten Dallas is an hour behind.”

 

Art put his head in one hand and waved Raylan and Rachel out of the office, Raylan calling over his shoulder, “You’re going to miss your connection, dick.” Raylan cuffed Chris from IT upside the head on his way past Tim’s desk. “Hey, asshole – you could mention next time that the flight was delayed.”

 

“What am I, a weatherman?”

 

X---X

 

_Fort Sill, Oklahoma_

 

“Major Fischer? There’s someone at the staff desk looking for you,” Eli Fischer looked up distractedly at the nervous PFC hovering just inside the door of his office. “Civilian. Says you were his CO in another life. His words. Sir.”

 

Skeptical but intrigued, he trotted down the stairs. A low voice – familiar, in a distantly vague sort of way – another life – carried around the corner of the stairwell, and he paused at the entry of the battalion’s lobby where a cross-armed young man in dark, nondescript civilian clothes was regaling the bored kids on staff duty with tales of his misadventures.

 

“…the look on the MPs’ faces when they go to call our first sergeant and a cell starts ringing in the pocket of one of the guys they’ve got in cuffs. So then they try the commander, and have to dig the phone out from under the guy passed out on the floor.”

 

“Who’d they try after that?”

 

Eli cleared his throat. “Top of the command chain - my wife.”

 

A familiar face he could safely say he _never_ thought he’d see again turned around and grinned easily while the soldiers laughed dutifully. “Aw, sir, you gave yourself away, I wasn’t naming names.”

 

He stepped forward and looked the man over a moment, before shaking his hand and clasping his arm. “Tim Gutterson. Goddamn. What brings you here?”

 

“Ah, one of those shitty little propeller planes that seems like a stiff Oklahoma wind’ll knock it outta the air.”

 

“Still a smartass, I see.”

 

“Better’n a dumbass.”

 

He pulled his former NCO out of the lobby space and led him back up to his office. Sarcastic deflection was hardly new, even before the last couple of fraught months the two had worked together at Benning after redeploying from Kandahar via Bagram. It didn’t take a genius to guess that anything Tim had come to discuss was not meant for general consumption. But a certain reluctance also compounded as they moved deeper into the building, and by the time they reached his second-floor office, Tim had a look on his face that suggested he knew as little about why he was there as did Eli.

 

So he started again on what he hoped was neutral ground once he’d shut the door and settled in opposite Tim at his desk. “Nice hand. Going for the permanent ‘live long and prosper’?”

 

Tim held up the splint and studied the immobilized digits for a moment. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Maybe not so neutral. “I reached an impasse with an offensive piece of dry wall about,” he made a fist with his right hand, “yea big. Pissed my boss off to no end.”

 

“You put a hole in the wall at work?”

 

“Nah, I streamlined the process and waited to do it at my therapist’s office.”

 

A jolt of surprise surged through Eli, with a wave of relief fast on its heels, the strength of which caught him off guard. He offered a little half-smile though and asked, “Your therapist bill your boss for it?”

 

“Shit, I didn’t even think to ask. No, he’s pissed though because these,” he held up both his damaged and healthy hands, “are still valuable assets and now I can’t hold a damn rifle.” He must have read the obvious follow-up in Eli’s eyes, and offered quietly, “I did go to Glynco. Going on three years with the Marshals Service now, in Kentucky.” There was a short pause while Tim looked like he was trying to wrap his mind and mouth around something. “And, uh. That’s been good for me. So thanks for, you know – putting a word in. I know those last few months before you finally got rid of me were not the easiest.”

 

“I didn’t think you were going to go,” Eli confessed.

 

Tim let out a half-manic burst of laughter and rubbed nervously at his forehead. “I didn’t either. But the first thing I did after my discharge was go to visit Mark…” he paused awkwardly. “You remember…?” Eli nodded. “And he was a couple months out already, dumped in the hands of the VA with a jacked up leg and an Oxy addiction and just… messed up, and all I could think was _what the hell am_ I _doing?_. I made some calls, played the _newly redeployed,_ _visiting my wounded war buddy_ card, got my interview rearranged.”

 

“I am really fucking glad to hear it,” he returned in all sincerity. “Damn.” He rubbed tiredly at his own face, feeling a sudden weight of years pressing down on him, but also a small measure of lingering doubt that eased slightly. “There was no good way past that clusterfuck.”

 

“You did your best.”

 

He scoffed and looked away, thinking back involuntarily to getting woken by a noticeably drunk Corporal Olveira looking wild-eyed and rambling almost incoherently, and following him, still half-asleep, while he just went on about _lots of blood, Jesus Christ, he’s a mess and he won’t let me get the MPs and holy mother of Christ, Gutterson._

 

Figuring that if his sarcastic young sniper reeked of half as much booze as his spotter, it’d probably been one hell of a drunken brawl, but entering the room and finding a cot spattered in blood, a bright red pool smeared on the floor, and Sergeant Gutterson sitting in a corner on the floor, wrapped in a blanket and rubbing at bright red lacerations on his wrists and forearms, all coherent thought had left him.

 

“I didn’t do anything,” he murmured at last. Because his orders to Olveira to fetch their company medic, to send someone to get the MPs, had been undermined by Tim’s adamant refusal, and Eli had let him get away with it when he pulled him in close with a fistful of shirt and snarled _You do that and this ends exactly one way for me, Captain_ , and his almost off-handed explanation of _You know that guy in the two-fifteenth that about got his leg blown off? Yeah, we’ve been fucking since Basic, sir_. “Never figured out what I _should_ have done instead, but I was always pretty sure _nothing_ was the wrong answer.”

 

“And I probably should have let you,” Tim agreed. “It was a rigged system.”

 

“Still is,” Eli shrugged helplessly. “But they’re trying. I guess. I don’t know. They do their reports, and have their congressional committees, and their annual leaders training that tells no one nothing they don’t already know about the fact that there _is_ a problem, but offers little as far as solutions go.” He sighed. “At least today, it could have been reported without the fear of losing your job. You could have…” he hesitated, “…gotten help I think you needed.”

 

The question in his words, if not his tone, made Tim laugh softly to himself. “Well, a few years late but I’m getting it now.” A flash of pain crossed his face, but he tampered it down quickly. “Mark, ah. He was killed a few months back, at his dealer’s. Things sort of… spiraled from there.”

 

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

 

“We weren’t…” He didn’t finish that thought. “Anyway. I don’t know why I’m here. Hadn’t seen this fucking place since Basic, and then remembered that this was your regular stomping ground. Mighta misappropriated some government resources to check.”

 

“Sill’s really coming up in the world; we’ve got a Starbucks now.”

 

“Great,” he drawled, sitting back. “Maybe you can buy me a drink.”

 

Intentionally or not, his words hearkened back to the tenuous time between the attack, their redeployment a month later, and Tim’s separation from the Army three months after that. It was a process Eli had encouraged and then expedited, in the interests of getting the increasingly insubordinate, troubled young man gone before a new commander came in who would waste no time taking disciplinary action as Tim became more and more unreliable in tandem with his self-medicating, primarily in the form of hard liquor.

 

“Just coffee,” Tim elaborated weakly at last, perhaps reading the turn his old CO’s thoughts had taken. He held up his casted hand. “Rumor has it Vicodin and bourbon make for a wicked cocktail though.”

 

“Bourbon? Damn, Gutterson, you gone native?”

 

He snorted. “Shit, I got this coworker, longtime Kentucky expat, he got reassigned back home as a loving _fuck you_ after he dragged the Miami office through the mud when he told this real son of a bitch cartel gun thug – I shit you not – that he had a day to leave Miami, or he’d shoot him. He’s from this backwoods corner of the state that’s got these honest-to-God family feuds like something out of the War of the goddamn Roses, but the one fucking thing all of them can apparently agree on is that if it ain’t bourbon, it ain’t worth drinking.”

 

Eli grinned. “You _have_ gone native.”

 

Tim lapsed into a sullen, contemplative silence, shadow crossing over his face, and when he spoke up again, he spoke quietly down at his hands held in his lap, right one clenched into a fist. “I killed the man who killed Mark. That man was a veteran, they used the same dealer, something went south, Mark happened to be there at the same time. He was in Kentucky working for one of those feuding wannabe criminal kingpins. And I lied to the local police about the one clue they had – Mark texted me, but he didn’t know the guy’s name – because I wanted to be the one to bring the motherfucker down. And I knew I’d get my chance because our paths had already crossed, were bound to cross again, and I knew that if I stalked him like a goddamn animal, he’d give me an excuse sooner or later to put him down.

 

“And he did,” he shrugged. “Tried to kill someone else, tried to pull on me, and I shot him twice in the chest. On paper, it was a justified shooting, just like my coworker’s was down in Miami, and if anyone else had happened across him at the same time, I imagine it’d have gone down in much the same manner. But I lied to the police about Mark’s last word, and I lied to my office about who Mark was, so that I could track the fucker down and get it done myself, because all I could see were those two sons of bitches I knew raped me, and all I could think about was that I hadn’t gotten revenge on my own behalf back in Kandahar three years ago.”

 

He drew a shuddering breath, and then finally looked up and offered a wan smile. “I think my therapist’s been waiting for me to admit that.”

 

X---X


	6. Part 6

**Part 6**

 

He only stayed in Oklahoma one night. Eli Fischer dragged him home like a stray dog for supper with his wife, who Tim did not much remember, but seemed to remember him fondly enough, and he opted not to dwell on whether he was simply memorable because perhaps Eli had told her what happened in Afghanistan. Their twin children were also home on winter break from their respective colleges.

 

(“Micah’s studying political science down at TCU; Lauren’s doing some engineering something-or-other I don’t understand up at OU and, God help me, ROTC.”)

 

In the morning, he went for a short drive just north of post to run up Oklahoma’s excuse for a mountain, returned to his hotel to shower and check out, and then met his old CO for that cup of coffee before hitting the road; he’d decided the night prior to take the rental car back to Kentucky instead of flying.

 

May as well give everyone an extra day to cool down from his unexpected travels. Plus, he had one more impulsive trip down memory lane to explore, and he found himself studying a good ol’ fashion Rand McNally road atlas to figure out the most logical route through his hometown of Bellefonte, Arkansas, to which he had not returned since he’d left for Basic.

 

He remembered sitting next to Mark in the dining facility, laughing, two weeks before graduation and feeling good, before one of the most hard-ass drill sergeants came and pulled him from the meal, marched him back to the battery with nary more than a _Captain Wood needs a word._ He’d thought for sure then that he and Mark were caught out, wondered if Mark was going to be similarly marched off after they’d finished with him, and when he’d entered the office to see a somber-faced Captain Wood and her stoic XO, it had occurred to him at last that he _really didn’t want to be kicked out_.

 

It had taken him a long time to process their words, that his uncle had put through a message saying his father had died. And then his automatic dismissal of the idea of going home for the funeral and returning to cycle through his last two weeks of Basic with another class seemed to take everyone aback, but they recovered quickly enough that he assumed they came across all manner of family dysfunction dealing with a new batch of young kids every few months.

 

He was never quite sure if he’d have gone, were it not for Mark.

 

Just before they parted ways, Eli paused and leaned across the small table in the coffee shop to be heard even with his voice pitched low. “You know, I did a couple years as a CCC instructor… all these bright-eyed lieutenants, still enthusiastic about their careers, God, I hated them,” Tim grinned. “And the one thing they always, always asked was the most challenging part of command.”

 

The grin turned shrewd. “And you had my picture on a slide?”

 

“No,” he sighed, “and this was when Don’t Ask was in its death throes, so I opted _not_ to turn your story into a cautionary hypothetical about a lose-lose scenario regarding the policy. But I did tell them this: as a commander, they’re going to want to fix every problem that comes across their desk through the sheer power of rank and authority. It doesn’t often work that way. Communication and discipline are proactive and preventative, not reactive, and a commander needs to foster an environment that keeps those channels open, between soldiers and their NCOs, platoon leaders, and so on.

 

“And then I realized something – because you’d probably be embarrassed to know how often you’ve crossed my mind, these three years – I realized that, at the height of our difficulties, when we got back to Benning, I resented that you were gay, for the simple, selfish reason that it made me feel like I couldn’t do _my_ job. I had this bright, exemplary young NCO, best damn marksman I’ve seen even still… and you spend the better part of a year as someone’s boss, someone you’ve gotten drunk with, someone you’ve sent out on emergency _oh shit it’s my anniversary_ flower runs,” Tim’s grin returned full-force, “someone you count as a _friend_ , and suddenly find that there’s this piece of them you never knew and it shouldn’t have mattered but now it’s the _only_ thing that matters and you’re completely fucking stuck.”

 

Tim blinked unsurely. “You weren’t wrong to push me to get out.”

 

“No,” Eli agreed heavily, “and I never questioned that, exactly. At least I never saw a better way past the impasse between being unable to order you for a psych eval for fear of what it would dredge up about Kandahar, and knowing that you were looking at inevitable demotion at the _very least_ once a new commander came in.” He shrugged helplessly. “I just wanted it to be easier, and I was mad at the system that made it impossible, and I worried that I inadvertently transferred some of that anger onto you.”

 

“If you did,” Tim gave a crooked half-smile, “I was too drunk to notice.”

 

He could tell by the look on Eli’s face that he wasn’t entirely sure whether to believe him. But he let it go.

 

X—X

 

It was late on Wednesday evening when Tim finally made his way back to Lexington by way of the Cincinnati airport to drop off the rental and pick up his own vehicle. He didn’t go straight home, but at least when he showed up at doorstep of the little outskirt motel, it was without a bottle in his hand or liquor on his breath. Raylan didn’t answer the door with a gun hidden from sight, and looked altogether unsurprised to see Tim there as he stepped back and allowed the younger marshal to come in.

 

Similar to their last encounter, they took up chairs opposite one another at the small table under the window. Unlike that surreal night, Raylan did not produce any beer (or candy), and he looked more curious than concerned. “You just get back?”

 

“Yep. Want to give me a heads-up for when I go home? You guys break down the door and toss the place?”

 

“Nah, our superior sleuthing skills suggested that, given the absence of your car, we were unlikely to find you in a drug-and-alcohol-induced coma.”

 

Tim cocked his head to the side. “That all you were worried about?”

 

Raylan smiled lightly and avoided answering directly. “It was just unlike you, is all.” He paused, and asked shrewdly, “You really lose track of your time changes?”

 

“Nope.” He gave a little self-deprecating grin though. “I did feel like a dick when the flight delayed though, I thought I’d be calling just a half-hour late.”

 

“And leaving a note the day before saying you were taking a few days off would have just been too easy? Art woulda given you the time off.”

 

Tim shrugged. “It was impulsive, Raylan, that’s the best I’ve got.”

 

Raylan accepted that without further comment, probably read the unspoken words easily enough, that he didn’t want to risk being talked out of it, or second-guessing his trip based on someone else’s questions or confusion. “And this detour? Impulsive?”

 

“No, I been thinking about this detour since Monday.”

 

Sitting back in his chair, Raylan crossed his arms over his chest and cocked a brow, expression suggesting he wasn’t sure whether to find that assertion ominous or flattering. “Huh.”

 

A faint shadow of trepidation crossed Tim’s face. “I got a favor to ask. You’re not going to like it. It will probably make you mad. But I need this, and I promise you that I’m all here right now.”

 

“Tim, I am on the edge of my seat in suspense, here.”

 

He leaned forward and caught the older man’s eyes. “Tell me what happened between you and Tommy Bucks that drove you to hate him so much.”

 

X---X

 

Reggie listened to him talk for a long time. He started in his usual chair, but grew restless as his narrative went on and took to pacing the office, looking out the window, even sprawling on the couch for a few minutes before the stereotype drew him back to the chair. When he ran out of things to say, she nodded slowly and leaned back in her seat, considering him a minute.

 

“I’m not sure I entirely understand,” she said at last.

 

“Which part?”

 

“Your conversation with Raylan, about the man in Nicaragua.”

 

He gave a half-shrug, rested his head against his good hand, elbow propped on the chair arm. “You asked why I kept coming back to Raylan through it all. Some part of me realized, somewhere along the way, that he’d been where I was with Colton Rhodes. I told you before, I like to keep my work by the book; while I’d never accuse Raylan of such, he had to know what he was putting on the line when he gave his ultimatum, when he killed Tommy Bucks in Miami. It was just… something he had to see through. Consequences be damned.”

 

“Because of what Tommy Bucks had put him through.”

 

But Tim thought back on his drunken musings of two weeks prior and shook his head slowly. “Raylan’s anger is driven by empathy. He hated his father first and foremost for what he did to his mother. Bucks scared the hell out of him, but it was what he did to others – what he did to the man, with the dynamite – that made him throw all caution to the wind. He wasn’t worried Bucks might come at _him_ – he’s a cocky son of a bitch, anyway – it was what Bucks might do to someone else, anyone else.”

 

“And what about you, Tim? What drives _your_ anger?”

 

He’d known the question was coming ever since he started sorting through all this shit on the long drive home, during an anticlimactic stop by the house where he grew up, a trip to his father’s grave. No concise answer had ever presented itself, and he struggled to put his inner musings into coherent words. “Dishonor would be too simplistic,” he started slowly. “It’s more the… willful abandonment of integrity. It’s a depraved world, from my cynical desk, and terrible shit happens all the time. I can handle that. But when that depravity crosses into betrayal – deceiving a loved one, abuse of authority, the complete shattering of what should be unconditional trust between _brothers-in-arms_ in a goddamn warzone… what the hell are we even doing, you know? Where’s the line?”

 

“You can only know and hold your own,” Reggie murmured, after a minute of silent contemplation.

 

X---X

 

It was five days later, after his appointment that following Tuesday, that Art called him into his office upon his return and told him to shut the door. He eyeballed the splint still on Tim’s hand a minute before sighing and tossing his glasses to the desk, gesturing Tim to a seat. “I expect you already know what I’m going to say.”

 

“Reggie call you?”

 

“She did. Says you’re free to return to work as normal, as your hand allows; and that after Thursday, you’re supposed to see her once a week, which she eventually plans to pare down to once a month, and then as needed.”

 

Tim smiled dryly. “Oh good, she wasn’t just getting my hopes up, then. Got a good prison transpo detail or anything? I realize that they’ve gone south before, but statistically speaking, I’m probably not going to need to draw my weapon and, hell, even if I did, I’m still a better shot one-handed than most this office with two.”

 

“Yeah, actually, I’ve got Dunlop scheduled to get someone up at Parisville after lunch.” Tim kept his face strictly neutral until Art cracked a grin and let out a hearty laugh. “Shit, I’ll put Rachel on it, you can ride along. Rachel somehow manages to accomplish the bullshit assignments without getting locked in a bathroom or ambushed at a gynecologist’s office.”

 

“It was a prenatal imaging center, thank you.”

 

Art waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. You’ll have to be on the way by half past noon, take your lunch early.” Tim stood with the implied dismissal and hovered awkwardly a moment. Art glanced up and he stepped to the door, then cursed and ran a hand through his hair and turned back. “Something else on your mind, son?”

 

He lowered himself back into his chair. “Can we talk about this?”

 

“Which _this_?” Art threw up a hand in sudden frustration, frustration Tim knew he’d been holding back since he’d returned to Lexington the week prior. “The part where you ran off on me and scared the hell out of this office? The part where you got back into town Wednesday night but didn’t seem to make it home until Thursday morning?”

 

He blinked, taken aback, hadn’t considered that Art would be watching his movements like a hawk. “Jesus Christ, Chief.”

 

“Or,” he continued, undeterred, “the part where I got no idea what’s going on in your head but, less than two weeks after you break your hand on a wall, barely a week after your little disappearing stunt, I’m supposed to take this woman’s a-okay and send you back out into the world with a badge and a gun in your hand?”

 

His temper was rising fast. “You pitched me to her, if you don’t recall. You want me to talk through all my bullshit with you now, too?”

 

“No, I daresay between Regina and Raylan, all your needs are being met.”

 

Tim stared at him for ten seconds, forcibly biting down any number of escalating replies that he’d regret later. Then he took a slow, deep breath through the nose, stood, and walked out of the office without another word.

 

X---X

 

He sat and waited, pretending to work after getting back from the transportation detail; then he executed the most ninja of last second slides into a closing elevator that would have made Raylan proud. He leaned against the controls and stared Art down stoically until they began descending. A quick flip of his wrist dragged them to an emergency halt somewhere between the third and fourth floors.

 

Art’s expression changed from surprised to confused to a general sort of peevishness, but Tim cut him off as soon as he opened his mouth. “We ain’t gonna do this.”

 

“Do what, Tim?”

 

He crossed his arms over his chest and settled in, still blocking the controls. “This CO of mine during my last deployment… he was a good enough officer, but kind of a shitty commander. A bit too friendly with his lieutenants and his NCOs, but we used that familiarity to run a tight ship, so he was able to get away with it. And then he found himself stuck in a situation where he had to choose between one of those friendships and doing his job, and he chose wrong. I knew he would, soon as I told him _why_ I didn’t want to report what happened to me, why I didn’t want to go get medical attention; because he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t care that you were gay, and would want to help you keep that secret.

 

“But then he let that knowledge dictate his response to a situation where he should have been uncompromising. Fucked up as it was, I always knew my career was a slip away from ending, and he should have let those chips fall as they may. _I_ sure as hell was in no condition, in the moment or in the months after when my issues clearly progressed from physical to psychological, to claim that I was _fine_.

 

“So we had this total breakdown in our personal relationship, and eventually our professional one, too, because he knew I wasn’t fine, and I knew I wasn’t fine, but I didn’t want to do anything about it and he didn’t want to make me. So he tried to help me with an out, instead, thought that maybe outside the Army environment, I’d get a grasp on my life again. Made some calls, asked around for options for someone with my particular skillset, put in a very flattering recommendation at Glynco and then I almost blew that, too.

 

“But here I am. You’re stuck with all,” he waved his hand vaguely, “this, for now at least. I’m a good marshal, but I have fucked up. I thought maybe you and I could sit down and talk about that – in the interests of our future working relationship.”

 

Art nodded slowly. “I think that’d be good.”

 

Tim reached back and flipped the switch again and the elevator whirred back into life. “Well, okay then. Here’s the deal though – you don’t make presumptions that’ll censor my workload. You got a concern, you’ll ask me. In return, I will show you the same courtesy and tell you if something ain’t working for me.”

 

The elevator doors opened. Tim stood aside and allowed Art to exit first, and they fell into step towards the parking garage, almost empty this late in the evening. Art still hadn’t said anything, and a quick glance at his face showed him looking contemplative, brows furrowed, and Tim exhaled noisily in annoyance.

 

“You really need to hear this? I ain’t sleeping with Raylan.”

 

“Oh, thank Christ,” Art sighed in relief. He clasped an arm around Tim’s shoulders, then drew him to a halt just inside the double doors leading out to the cold garage. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Tim,” he met his eyes steadily. “And it’s good to have you back. Tomorrow, we’ll have that talk, alright?”

 

“See you at eight, Chief.”

 

 

While he drove, he thought about his return from his first deployment, the pomp and circumstance, marching everyone through a crowded auditorium full of crying spouses and children and parents and him, hovering awkwardly to one side with no one to greet him, waiting to finally be dismissed so he could go to the barracks and sleep for a day.

 

As he trooped out into the North Carolina summer heat that might have been paradise after a year in Afghanistan, as families split off to whisk their soldiers away for a happy reunion, he spotted a familiar face behind a ridiculous pair of sunglasses leaning against a column. When he obviously had Tim’s attention, he peeled away and threaded his way through a crowded parking lot, stopping at a shiny black pickup midway down the row.

 

Tim tossed his duffel in the bed and climbed in, and only then spared a grin for Mark, still watching him behind the glasses. “You drive all the way down here from Drum?”

 

“Anyone asks, I’m at my cousin’s bar mitzvah.”

 

He peered around the inside of the vehicle and hummed appreciatively. “I see you saved well during your own travels abroad.”

 

They didn’t much speak as they sat in the line of cars pulling out of the lot; it wasn’t until they were off base and out of any traffic to speak of that Tim reached a hand over and rested it carefully on Mark’s leg. They rode like that, in silence, for more than an hour, until Mark pulled into a hotel just south of Raleigh. He looked over a bit hesitantly before getting out of the car though. “Maybe you want to go get a bite to eat first…”

 

Tim just shook his head, not trusting his voice, and he wished he had a pair of sunglasses to hide behind as he dutifully followed Mark through the side door, positive that everyone they passed in the hall could see the wired anticipation in his eyes, in his step. The door to the room hadn’t yet closed and Tim was flinging his bag onto the first of the two beds – always two beds – and the second it clanged shut, he whirled and seized Mark and didn’t stop touching him for what seemed like hours.

 

Several rounds, two naps, and a shower later, he lay with Mark’s head in the crook of his arm, his hand curled around and resting in his hair. “S’getting long,” he murmured. “Should get it cut.”

 

“You should let yours _down_ ,” Mark returned, craning his neck around to smile at him. “Enjoy this post-deployment phase where they try not to give too much of a shit about the petty stuff. Say,” he twisted around fully so they were lying chest-to-chest, “what are you doing with your leave block?”

 

“What do you think?” he grinned. “I understand upstate New York is lovely, this time of year. There’s like… wineries…”

 

“Not old enough.”

 

“Cooperstown…”

 

“You hate baseball.”

 

“…Hiking?”

 

“That one might pass muster.”

 

“And there’s you.”

 

They exchanged a sad sort of smile, and then Mark sat up and ran a hand through his lengthening hair. “There is. About that though… they’re already starting to eyeball my next gig. Not for a few months, but… looks like it’ll probably be back out west.”

 

Tim pulled himself to sitting as well. “Oklahoma?”

 

“Maybe, maybe Kansas.” He shrugged helplessly. “I was thinking though, you might be able to get a casual word in now, maybe happen to find yourself out that way again, too…”

 

Tim grimaced and looked down. “They already got me lined up for something.”

 

“Oh. Wow, already?”

 

“Yeah,” he rubbed anxiously at the back of his head, still damp from the shower. “Ah… back down to Benning. Sniper school.”

 

“Jesus Christ, Gutterson.”

 

He just gave another little shrug. “No one ever makes it through that shit, anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” Mark agreed, “but you will.” He looked resigned, but proud, and Tim felt a bit of color rise in his cheeks. “And then the Ranger Regiment will get its claws in you and never let go.”

 

“That happens,” Tim found himself cautioning reluctantly, “this’ll get harder.”

 

“We’ll make do. Keep being careful. And maybe someday, you’ll get bored of being such a badass and we’ll get out.”

 

His lips quirked. “Sounds awful domestic. Where we gonna go?”

 

“I was thinking back to Kentucky.”

 

He snorted a laugh. “No, but if you could go anywhere.”

 

“Lexington,” Mark elaborated defensively. “Grew up there, before my parents moved out to the country.” Tim still looked unconvinced. “Alright – where would _you_ go, could go anywhere?”

 

“Ah,” he waved him off, “I’ll give Kentucky a shot. If you’re there.”

 

“I’ll hold you to that.”

 

X—X

 

An hour later and it was late for a social call, but a few lights were still on at the old country farmhouse; another one flipped on in the front hall as his car crunched down the dirt and gravel drive, and the front door opened as he stepped out of the car. A burly man, aged more than just the three years since Tim had last seen him, walked out onto the porch. “You lost, friend?” he called, peering out into the dark. The way the man kept within arm’s reach of the door suggested to Tim that he was ready to reach back for a shotgun if necessary.

 

“Ah… maybe,” he allowed, coming slowly towards the porch steps. “It’s Tim.” He reached the range of the floodlight sensors and stopped, blinking quickly and shielding his eyes. “Gutterson,” he added uselessly, standing in the glare.

 

The man’s posture relaxed. “Well, hell. Marie!” he called back into the house. “Flip those lights off, would you?” He beckoned Tim forward. “C’mon up here, son.”

 

Verne Hastings stood aside and gestured him into the house. Soft footsteps padded towards them from the direction of the kitchen, if he recalled correctly, and then Mark’s diminutive mother was peering curiously into the hall. She stopped short with a soft, “Oh!” and then hurried forward and pulled him down into a fierce embrace.

 

“I shoulda called,” he mumbled against her shoulder.

 

“You know we keep late nights,” Verne muttered gruffly.

 

He pulled back from Marie’s arms and ran a hand through his hair nervously. “I – no, I mean. I should have called. Before now. I missed the funeral.”

 

She smiled understandingly. “You also missed Sunday dinner three years ago, and never came back.” He grimaced. “Come, come. Sit, give Verne your coat. I’ll make some tea.”

 

 

“I was going to be there,” Tim found himself explaining quietly, staring down into a steaming mug instead of up at their eyes, seated side by side on a sofa across from an armchair he felt like he was sinking into rather than sitting on. “Work was… weird that week. Got stuck halfway across the state for a couple days. Had the suit laid out and everything.”

 

Marie leaned forward, rested her cup on the coffee table. “Tim. We understood that maybe you couldn’t be there. Because of work or… any other reason.”

 

He liked to think he’d have been there, had he _not_ been gallivanting across Harlan on the hunt for Drew Thompson, but who could say.

 

Verne cleared this throat, voice sounding a bit raw. “Police told us you’d been in touch.”

 

“Yeah,” he raised his eyes. “I don’t know if you’d really… want to know this. But he’s dead. The man who killed him. LPD’ll probably never close the case, but… he was involved in some shit on the Marshals’ radar. And I knew.”

 

They didn’t ask any of the obvious follow-ups, for which he was grateful. He rubbed at his eyes, and when he spoke again, he knew the raw emotion built up in his throat turned his voice desperate. “Was he ever happy again? I mean, I know between the pain and the pills and the withdrawal…”

 

“There were good days,” Marie assured him, her own eyes glistening. “More of them, towards the end. He was happy to see you again; even though he said he made you mad.” A strangled sound escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I know it had been a while before that.” She hesitated. “He worried about you a lot, these few years.”

 

He blinked up at her in surprise. “About _me_?”

 

“Yes. Told us after you left for your marshal training that it felt like a piece of you never made it back from Afghanistan.” His own tears finally brimmed over. “Tim? Were _you_ ever happy again?”

 

He bit back a rough laugh. “Mostly I try to keep too busy to notice.” Their saddened looks made him hasten to add, “I like my job. Work with some good people. And I’ve been seeing someone. For the PTSD thing,” he elaborated awkwardly. “Not, uh…” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair nervously. “I don’t know if I should… fuck.” He winced. “Sorry. I feel like we been dancing around this, but I could never tell if you knew that, ah… Mark and I…”

 

“Tim,” Verne stared steadily across the table until he looked up and met his eyes. “We knew. Maybe not right at the jump, but, well – reached a point where we realized every time we called him to check in, he spent more time talking about _your_ latest achievements. He was so goddamn proud when you finished sniper school.”

 

Not trusting his voice, Tim kept his mouth pressed firmly closed. Marie leaned in and reached over for his hand. “He maybe couldn’t express it so well in the end,” she said softly. “But he still loved you. And he understood that maybe that was something you couldn’t give him, anymore. He was too wrapped up in his own troubles to show it but… it meant a lot to him that you came to Kentucky anyway.”

 

He excused himself to go splash cold water on his face and take a few minutes to collect himself. He left shortly thereafter with promises to come by for that missed Sunday dinner; a quick visit all told, but they seemed to understand that, even if he hadn’t realized it when he’d started driving out of Lexington, he’d gotten what he came for.

 

**FIN.**


End file.
